Anybody know of "serious" mathematical ornaments or toys like the Gömböc, etc?
Already have a rubix and abacus (that's more of a tool though).
2026-03-25 11:08:32.1774436912
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Mathematical toys?
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Zometool is a construction kit which has 2-, 3-, and 5-fold symmetry, which is great for building (3D projections of) the 120-cell, or just for playing around.
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For when the Möbius strip is too pedestrian, the good people at Acme Co. claim their Klein bottles are the "finest closed, non-orientable, boundary-free manifolds sold anywhere in our three spatial dimensions."
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Wikipedia has a section on mechanical puzzle.
As for myself, my fascination with algebraic topology began with metal link puzzles or hanayama.
Of course, Tower of Hanoi is a classic.
Of interest may be the reference: Adventures in Group Theory: Rubik’s Cube, Merlin’s Machine, and Other Mathematical Toys by David Joyner. Book description in Amazon.
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Love zometool [1]
[1]: http://www.zometool.com/ for geometry, platonic and archimedean solids, among others/
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I think there are 2 different toy devices that mimic a Gray code. One can be seen at http://mypuzzlecollection.blogspot.com/2011/12/brain.html. The other is named "Spin Out".
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While it may be a 'children's toy', the Switch Pitch works remarkably well as an object of mathematical sculpture; it's fundamentally based on the fact that the vertices of a regular cube are also the vertices of two (interlocked) regular tetrahedra (if your cube is $\{0,1\}^3$, take the vertices with $i+j+k$ respectively odd or even). It helps that people can't help but fiddle with it; it's been a perfect hand-fidgetting toy for me.
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Spirograph from Hasbro. You can make lots of famous mathematical curves with its pieces: epicycloids, hypocycloids, etc. MathWorld has an article on some of these curves.
On Shapeways, you can find a variety of mathematical ornaments.
My favorites are the differential geometric surfaces designed by Bachman. I also like Bathsheba's designs as well.
(Sorry the image is so large. Is there a way to reduce the size?)