12-Ring Circus

360 binder clips arranged in 12 colorful, interlocking rings.

Designed in May, 2012; constructed in July, 2012. Thanks to Steve and Bruce for help with prototyping and building.

Twelve colorful rings of binder clips bend around each other in a highly symmetric pattern. There are two rings in each of six colors, for a total of 360 binder clips.

This sculpture shows that the edges of a rhombicosidodecahedron may be partitioned into 12 regular decagons. The rings forming these decagons weave up and down through each other, and every pair of rings that intersect are in fact linked together (as in the Hopf link). A tubular representation of the twelve interlocking rings is shown below; I used a version of this image for this website's address-bar icon.

Twelve tubes arranged as in the 12-Ring Circus sculpture.

Image rendered in Mathematica 8.