This magnet toy is great for exploring geometric shapes and the awesome power of MAGNETS. It is inspired by natural geometry and buckyballs, which are way too much fun. Unless you eat them. DO NOT EAT THE MAGNETS.

I helped build a couple of soccer robot kits this week and liked the shape of the 40mm soccer ball included with the kits. Its surface is made up of both hexagons and pentagons - a soccer ball with flat sides. After a quick google search, I found a tutorial to build up a Buckyball or more formally, a Buckminsterfullerene in honor of the architect Richard Buckminster Fuller (inventor of the Geodesic Dome). At the heart of the object is a Truncated-Icosahedron with a carbon atom attached at each of the 60 vertices (edge intersetions). The description says this is the most symmetrical molecule possible made up of 60 Carbon atoms. Who could argue with that?

The Buckyball here (less Carbon atoms) has a 40mm DIA to match the one that comes with the soccer robot as shown in the photo of the bot, the included ball and the MakerBot printed one.

Here is the tutorial URL (no affiliation):
webdesign.org/3d-graphics/tutorials/how-to-make-a-buckyball.597.html

12 5-sided polygons that fit together to form a dodecahedron. This is probably the smallest buckyball that you could realistically make. There a solid version, and a "wired version", which is way way easier to put together. This is to mess with you geometry-lovers out there.