Twist Stars – A Method of Construction
That’s my old friend, Catullus, who often wrote in hendecasyllabics, that is, an eleven syllable line. Here, he’s saying, To whom shall I give this pretty little blog entry? To you, gentle reader…
It occurred to me the other day that twist stars, such as the nine- and ten-pointed models I written about before, probably have an Al Gore Rhythmic method to them. So I thought about it a while and decided that there is.
Briefly, choose a regular polygon. Then choose a regular polygram to fold inside it. (There are very sharp ones and very dull ones — I like the middle ones, myself.) Now, fold another polygram inside the smaller polygon you just created, connecting not the corners, but the midpoints. This forms yet a third polygon in the middle. Make a tato from that smallest polygon, fold in and squash the pleats. That’s it.
Can’t quite visualize it? That’s okay, I made a slide show for a hendecagram twist star. (Or the detail view, if you prefer a slower approach.) Before you click over, you might want to print and cut out a hendecagon.
There’s nothing all that profound about these — they’re just pretty and look good in the window when the sun comes through. The method is extensible, but who knows how far? There are lots of regular polygons and a whole lot more polygrams.
