[Guest]

The Candlemaker

Ken was looking for a present for his daughter's eighth birthday. She liked to collect

candles, and he entered the shop of a local candlemaker looking for something special.

The candlemaker was carefully pouring beeswax into a set of prepared forms balanced point down

in some triangular holes in his workbench. "I'm making tetrahedron's," he said, grabbing another

form from a stack of them. "I make all my forms myself. This is my simplest form; just three

equilateral triangles taped at the edges, but still very popular."

Ken described his idea. "An eight-sided candle, eh?" the candle-maker smiled. Are you looking

specifically for an octagon or a regular eight-sided three-dimensional object, an octahedron?"

"You can do that?" asked Ken?

"While you watch, " beamed the candlemaker. Just hand me those supplies, he said, reaching

for another form from the stack.

The supplies consisted of the same triangles used in the forms, some larger triangles (exactly

double the length), and a set of adhesive strips matching the lengths of each of the triangle's

sides.

Ken was astounded at how quickly and easily the new form came together. In fact, the

candlemaker was able to build the form using fewer than a dozen pieces and had it assembled

in about a minute.

"You know," he said, "If I hadn't left my hot-knife at home, I could do it with even fewer

pieces, including the hot-knife itself."

How did he create the form, and what was his alternate technique?

Edited December 24, 2008 by Phatfingers

[Guest]

I was curious about how well this would actually work, so I cut a bunch of triangles out of a cereal box and taped them together. It really was easier to do than to think about. Now, I've got the bug and want to try pouring candle wax into it.

The final form can be assembled entirely out of tetrahedrons.

The starting shape used in the hot-knife method is a tetrahedron.

If you snip the points off a triangle, it creates a shape with double the number of sides.

[bonanova]

Is it related to this?