Geodesic Dome Structures

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What’s a Dome?

• Domes are curved structures

• They protect something inside them

• They can be made in one piece like a shell

• They can also be made from triangles and are then called Geodesic (Jee-O-Dess-ikk) domes

Who invented them?

Shell Domes occur naturally

Their shape gives them strength and many creatures from tortoises to sea urchins use dome shapes for their protection

Manufactured Domes• Buckminster Fuller, an American Engineer,

invented the geodesic dome in the 1950’s

• Geodesic domes are made from separate pieces of ‘material’ arranged in triangles, pentagons and hexagons

• The position of the shapes and their sizes is critical and needs Maths to work it out

• Geodesic Domes are the strongest lightweight structures you can make

This is an example of a Geodesic dome

How a Dome is made

Pieces of stiff material are joined at the corners to

make stable triangle shapes

Here a simple dome is made up of two different length materials

Geometric Shapes in the dome

Hexagonal shape

Pentagonal shape

Real Life Domes

                                                                              

Building big domes