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Kite Gallery
Booklet n°8 - Pic Pic - NEW
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This kite
has been named "Pic Pic" by my son and has
been build following the instructions of Phil
Womack for his "Spike"
kite, himself inspired by the
famous Fugu of Peter
Lynn.
I was
interesred in the fact that :
- It's a
kite you can build in a quite large size since it's
modular - my version has a diameter of more than 2
meters.
- I have
never before build this kind of kite : a "line junk"
self-inflatable structure.
- It's a
perfect beach game for youngsters if left "unatended" on
the sand...
- It's a
nice lesson of geometry.
This last
point can lead you in investigating the regular polyhedrons
- AKA the solids of Platon - and it's derivatives.
The "football", or truncated icosahedron, is a modified
version of the icosahedron (20 triangular surfaces). It has
32 surfaces (12 pentagons and 20 hexagons.
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Models
Pic Pic is based upon the truncated
Icosahedron. For my kite, all pentagons are black and the
hexagons come in five different colors. I made sure that all
hexagons situated around a pentagon would be of a different
color. It was quite difficult to figure out and I had to
build several paper models out of Illustrator drawings
before I got it right !
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Another differnce between Pic Pic and a
truncated Icosahedron is that each pentagon has a spike
(looks like a witch's hat), therefore it's "spikey"
name.
I should also add that one pentagon has no spike and has
instead a skirt, that helps to channel the wind into the
kite, and a valve, that prevents the air of going back
out.
In my version, the valve works a little too well ! I will
add a small piece of line so to keep the valve open during
the inflation process.
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