The Menger Sponge

[brightcove vid=704923037001&exp3=111623825001&surl=http://c.brightcove.com/services&pubid=294434710&pk=AQ~~,AAAAABGMt5Y~,W3tqT-mQ0BMX4lJgptCx-Scx7UJTATnN&w=300&h=225] My honors origami class assembled on Thursday, December 9, 2010, to complete the construction of the final class project: a third-level approximation of a Menger sponge. Each person was responsible for building their own Level 2 sponge; that takes 2400 business cards. We then took 20 of these and put them together to form the big cube. The end result is made from 48,000 cards, weighs 150 lbs, and is 4 1/2 feet on a side. Surprisingly, it only took a little over an hour to do the final assembly. I built the wheeled wooden platform it rests upon and it's on display in the lobby of the Marston Science Library on the UF campus.

I'm very proud of my class. They worked hard on this, and it shows.

Thanks to the Gainesville Sun for the video. Thanks also to the folks at Marston, especially Amy Buhler and Margeaux Johnson, for their help.