CONSTRUCTING A SOCCER BALL

Editor's Note: Soccer fan Cecilia M. ('16) tackled a challenging geometric puzzle by assembling a miniature soccer ball model.

I have loved to watch and play soccer ever since I was very little, but I have never understood how the pattern of hexagons and pentagons fit together in the balls. I decided to make a soccer ball out of paper for my explore math! This allowed me to see and understand how the hexagons and pentagons fit together. Using a template that showed me how they fit together, I folded, cut, and pasted to create a paper soccer ball. Below I have included the steps I took to make the paper soccer ball. 

1. I looked up the template for the paper soccer ball online (https://isotropic.org/polyhedra/) I cut out one hexagon and one pentagon that had the same side lengths 

2. I used these cut out shapes to draw the template (wanted sides to be of the same length) 

3.  I drew out two of the templates 

4. I cut out the templates 

5.  I folded each template according to the shape of a soccer ball and taped them 

6. Here is a photo of my finished product; I put the two halves together by taping them

There was limitations to this model: the paper folded well, but the tape could not stick well on the curved sides (the ball fell apart after a couple of days). This was a very fun and interesting experience. I now understand the shape of the soccer ball much more; I think I would be able to draw one more accurately. The ball did not fit together perfectly, which I believe was a result of the hexagons and pentagons not being perfectly equivalent in size. I would love to try this again, if I ever have time, and hopefully make an even better one!