Playing with Plato (Zen Magnets)

This video illustrates the wonder and versatility of Zen Magnets by using them to build the five Platonic solids. The video won Zen Magnets Flagship Video Contest 39 (http://contest.zenmagnets.com).

Plato (427-347 BC) associated the five regular solids with the five classical elements [1 - 3]:

0:56 Tetrahedron (pyramid with four triangular faces) = Fire
1:38 Octahedron (with eight triangular faces) = Air
2:26 Icosahedron (with twenty triangular faces) = Water
4:33 Hexahedron (cube with six square faces) = Earth
3:36 Dodecahedron (with twelve pentagonal faces) = Universe

These "Platonic solids" are the only convex polyhedra with regular identical polygonal faces meeting at identical vertices. They present an exciting challenge to build using Zen Magnets because of their geometrical beauty and variety. This video shows how to build them using single-strand rings of a single set of 216 Zen Magnets.

Zen Magnets (http://www.zenmagnets.com) are shiny magnet spheres that offer limitless opportunities for creative play, artistic design, and education. They invite individuals to stretch their imaginations for shapes to build, to use critical thinking to figure out how to build them, and to appreciate the beauty of the shapes thus created.

Plato believed in the importance of play in education [4]. He would have loved Zen Magnets.

Audio Tracks:

We gratefully acknowledge the YouTube Audio Library for the two audio tracks in this video: "First to Last," by Gunnar Olsen, and "Fortaleza," by Topher Mohr and Alex Elena.

References:

[1] "Thus, in accordance with the right account and the probable, that solid which has taken the form of a pyramid shall be the element and seed of fire; the second in order of generation we shall affirm to be air, and the third water." -Plato, Timaeus, Section 56b, English translation by Paul Shorey, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/.

[2] "To earth let us give the cubic form; for of the four kinds earth is the most immobile and the most plastic body, and of necessity the body which has the most stable bases must be pre-eminently of this character." -Plato, Timaeus, Sections 55d-e, English translation by Paul Shorey, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/.

[3] "And seeing that there still remained one other compound figure, the fifth, God used it up for the Universe in his decoration thereof." -Plato, Timaeus, Section 55c, English translation by Paul Shorey, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/.

[4] "Do not, then, my friend, keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play." -Plato, Republic, Book 7, Sections 536e - 537a, English translation by Paul Shorey, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/.