Tetrahedron Building Blocks

thingiverse

A six-sided challenge unfolds with each puzzle, assembling into three distinct sizes of tetrahedrons. The fundamental piece is crafted from five interconnected rhombic dodecahedra and comes in two mirror-image versions - orange and yellow, as seen in the photographs. This basic unit serves as the "tetrahedron building block" or TBB. Easy: pair one orange with one yellow TBB to construct a small tetrahedron of order 3. Moderate: assemble a medium tetrahedron (order 4) by combining two orange and two yellow TBB's. Difficult(ish): take three orange, three yellow TBB's, plus the red piece, and build a large tetrahedron of order 5. Each puzzle has a singular solution. The unusual shapes of the pieces require some time to get accustomed to. However, after experimenting with them for a while, the three challenges will likely seem manageable. The base plate is optional but may aid in understanding how the pieces fit together. For an "extreme" challenge, print out additional pieces and attempt to build "the Great Pyramid," a tetrahedron of order 8 using 12 yellow pieces and 12 orange pieces. This puzzle also has a unique solution and is likely too complex for manual solving. Interestingly, tetrahedrons of orders 6 and 7 cannot be constructed from TBBs because the number of rhombic dodecahedra does not align with multiples of five. It remains unclear if any tetrahedron above order 8 can be formed solely using TBBs.