How to make an Icosahedron

We made three different paper icosahedrons.

An icosahedron is a three dimensional object with twenty triangular faces. The triangles meet together in groups of five to form a solid. It is one of the five Platonic Solids.

Magna Tiles are a magnetic children's building toy. Since the set contains over 20 equilateral triangles, the first attempt to create an icosahedron was done using the Magna Tiles.

Unfortunately, they needed more internal support, and collapsed each time before the icosahedron could be closed.

Simple Paper Icosahedron

The second and more successful attempt was made using paper. Twenty connected equilateral triangles were sketched on the paper. In addition, several tabs were left on the triangles to facilitate assembly.

 The triangles were cut as one piece, and the paper was folded on the lines.

Once the icosahedron was closed with a small amount of glue it worked much better.

Twenty-Point Star Icosahedron

Although, at first glance, a twenty-point star may not look like an icosahedron, the base shape is indeed an icosahedron. If flat faces replaced the points of the star, it would look like the blue icosahedron above. The twenty-point star project was more challenging than the the blue icosahedron, but definitely worth the extra effort.

Small Triambic Icosahedron

Similarly, this origami small triambic icosahedron has points in groups of five for a total of 20 smaller points.