Hexagons side by side forms a flat surface, with zero curvature. Reading
Make Magazine's Math Monday, I learned that a pentagon among the hexagons makes the surface curvature positive, like the surface of a sphere. A heptagon does the opposite - it creates a saddle surface, which has a negative curvature.
Here, I've built the same bowl-shaped trial surface from white glass beads and from
Magnetic spheres. The surface is formed from hexagons, with a pentagon in each 'corner', to make the surface curve.
In an earlier post, I used only pentagons, which shapes the surface into a sphere.
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