Platonic Solids

 

Here's a small kit for printing out patterns for paper Platonic solids.

You can print these patterns on 65 or 110lb cardstock, cut them out and fold them together with locking tabs to create geometric shapes.

These patterns are ideal for a home or classroom activity. Decorate the faces with numbers or other things to create your own giant, paper dice.


SUPPLIES

You will need thick paper, a printer, scissors and a craft knife to print, cut out and assemble these shapes.

An embossing stylus or a ball point pen in combination with a ruler can be used to score the fold lines. 


INSTRUCTIONS

1. Print out the pages for each shape you want to make. Some shapes have more than one page. Some pages print best on US Letter or A4 paper sizes.

65 lb paper (175 gsm paper thickness) works well, but you can also try thicker paper.

2. Use a ruler and an embossing stylus to score all of the dashed fold lines.

3. Use a craft knife to cut all of the solid black slot lines.

4. Cut out the entire shapes along the solid black lines. Make sure to carefully cut around the tabs.

5. Gently fold all of the scored fold lines.

6. Gently insert each slot into the appropriate tab. The more complex patterns have numbered slots and tabs to help with proper shape alignment.

7. Each tab is slightly larger than a slot, so that the tabs will pop in and stay locked together.

8. Each polyhedron pattern will stay together under gentle handling and play conditions. You can drop and throw the completed paper polyhedron over and over!

ABOUT THIS KIT

Each polyhedron in this kit has something in common... all of the edges of each face are 2 inches long.

This kit was started 13 years ago! Origninally designed to be used in classrooms, along with some other math games I was working on at the time.


ABOUT CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE

This kit is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 - Share-Alike, By, Non-commercial, so you can create as many copies as you need for yourself or others. If you modify the kit, you can re-distribute it in any form, so long as you keep original attribution and do not sell any part of the kit or use it for commercial purposes.


ABOUT PLATONIC SOLIDS

The Platonic solids are three dimensional polyhedrons which have identical faces, like triangles, squares and even pentagons. There are five Platonic solids:

- Tetrahedron - with 4 triangle faces

- Hexahedron, or Cube - with 6 quare faces

- Octahedron - with 8 triangle faces

- Dodecahedron - with 12 pentagon faces

- Icosahedron - with 20 triangle faces 

Download Paper Platonic Solids PDF file HERE