Zome

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The term "zome" is used in two senses, though both are related. A zome in the original sense is a building using unusual geometries (different from the standard house or other building which is essentially one or a series of rectangular boxes). In the second sense as a learning tool or toy, "Zome" refers to a model-construction toy manufactured by Zometool, Inc.. It is sometimes thought of as the ultimate form of the "ball and stick" construction toy, in form. It appeals to adults as well as children, and is educational on many levels (not the least, geometry). The word "zome" was coined in 1968 by Steve Durkee, combining the words "dome" and "zonahedron."

Both the building and the learning tool are the brain children of inventor/designer Steve Baer, his wife, Holly, and others. Baer was educated at Amherst College, UCLA, and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (Zurich, Switzerland), where he studied mathematics. Here he became interested in the possibilities of building innovative structures using polyhedra (polyhedrons) other than rectangular ones. Baer and his wife, Holly, moved back to the U.S., settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In New Mexico, he experimented with constructing buildings of unusual geometries (calling them "zomes" – see "Drop City"), intended to be appropriate to their environment, notably to utilize solar energy well.

In recent years, the unconventional "zome" building-design approach — with its multi-faceted geometric lines — has been taken up by French builders in the Pyrenees. A recent book, Home Work, published in 2004 and edited by Lloyd Kahn, has a section featuring these buildings. While many zomes built in the last couple decades have been wood-framed and made use of wood sheathing, much of what Baer himself originally designed and constructed involved metal framing with a sheet-metal outer skin.

[edit] Construction Set

Zometool, a Colorado company that evolved out of Baer's ZomeWorks, also designed and sells the learning-tool or toy version, which can be used to explore the spacial geometries on a table-top level. It uses small balls, technically called "nodes", with pentagons, rectangles, and triangles on them as well as bars or sticks, called "struts", that come with the shapes on them. Struts come in four sizes as well as five colors. There are small, medium, and large struts that come in blue (rectangular), yellow (triangular), red (pentagonal), green (pentagonal), and blue-green (pentagonal). There is also another, smaller, strut, available only in red, called "R0". The nodes take the form of a modified rhombicosidodecahedron, with golden rectangles replacing the squares.

As well as imitating geometrical figures, the model Zome imitates structures found in nature.

There are many things that can be built using the Zome toy set. This includes anything from a model of the Empire State Building, to a rhombicosidodecahedron. This versatility allows Zome-toy's user to let their mind explore and wander to make nearly anything the heart desires. While many children love to play with the Zome set, engineers and scientists (such as Linus Pauling) use it in their research.

[edit] Partial List of Polyhedra Constructable with Zome

The five Platonic Solids
Eleven of the thirteen Archimedean Solids (all except for the snub cube and the snub dodecahedron)
Two Catalan Solids: the rhombic dodecahedron and the rhombic triacontahedron
Three of the four Kepler-Poinsot Solids: the small stellated dodecahedron, the great stellated dodecahedron, and the great dodecahedron
Numerous zonohedra, such as the rhombic enneacontahedron
Numerous polyhedral compounds, such as the compound of five cubes
Some of the Johnson Solids
Many more