Globe follow-up: Dymaxion projection
December 20, 2006 11:52 am GeneralAfter yesterday’s post, I went looking for one of those area-preserving maps I mentioned. Aside from the usual spherical and sinusoidal projections, I found out about the Dymaxion projection.
It’s an invention of Buckminster-Fuller, also famous for designing the Geodesic dome, and the Buckminster Fuller sphere (commonly known as the Bucky ball), which is now the classical geometry used for footballs, and who gave his name to the Carbon allotrope Buckminster-Fullerene (or C60) which has the same structure as the Bucky ball.
The globe is mapped onto an icosahedron, which almost eliminates distortion, and then unfolded to a planar surface. One interesting characteristic of the projection is that it’s possible to unfold the shape so that the continents are almost contiguously connected.
The other interesting thing is that once unfolded, it becomes obvious that Australia and Africa have almost exactly the same shape.
December 21st, 2006 at 3:37 am
Oh please, I want a an alternative Gnome time zone widget that is based on the Dymaxion map! How cool would that be.
December 21st, 2006 at 3:54 am
Actually, that would be a very interesting projection to incorporate into xplanet.
December 21st, 2006 at 5:12 am
To me, Australia and Africa do not look similar at all in this projection…
December 21st, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Guess he meant south america, not australia
December 21st, 2006 at 2:23 pm
If you rotate Australia 45 degrees clockwise, re-join Tasmania and then rejoin Madagascar to Africa I can see some resemblence. (Note: This is the shape similarity not the size.)
December 22nd, 2006 at 5:32 pm
want a christmas present?
http://order.tupperware.com:8080/coe-images/items/p10054276000_detail.jpg