Oh, Nooooo! WATCH OUT! It's a...

..... dodecahedron !

And it nearly took over our Math Class!!

It all started innocently enough.

Polygons.

I mean, what is not to like about scalene triangles, trapezoids , or that "drunken square," the rhombus (other than having to spell them correctly)?

It would have been simple enough to stick with two dimensions. But, no. It's nearly the end of the year. And, everyone else in the building is doing nothing much. But us? We end up with a pile of toothpicks, a pile of mini-marshmallows, a computer program, and a progressive 3-d building challenge.

"Can you build this without eating all your VERTICES?" she wanted to know.

Tetrahedron by Hoksina

(A marshmallow is a vertex, by the way.)

We started small... the 3 d polyhedron with the fewest vertices was the tetrahedron. We proved this, because if you took any vertex away, we ended up with a plane old polygon, a triangle, which everyone knows is 2 d. (And yes, plane is a pun.)

Cube by Jaden: 6 faces, 8 vertices, 12 edges

Then, we got a bit more complex. The cube is the most common polyhedron around here. There are a lot of examples. Dice. Boxes. Blocks. Ice cubes. Plus, we actually say "cube" more than we say "tetrahedron." (We also spell it a lot easier!)

Nyton bravely attempts a dodecahedron.

Before we knew it, we had ventured down the dangerous path towards octahedrons, icosahedrons, and, yes, the infamous dodecahedron, with its 12 faces (each being a pentagon, by the way!), 20 vertices and 30 edges.



That's a lotta marshmallows!

Will we conquer the dodecahedron, or will it conquer us????

Tune in tomorrow (or Monday, depending on attendance) to find out!