So, recently in math class we have been studying radicals. It’s a very complex topic that took me a while to fully understand, I could still use some work on the subject. For the unit project we looked at a very interesting math theory/phenomenon, the golden ratio.

It was an open ended project were we just had to show something that we did or made that complies with the golden ratio of 1:1.618. I decided to design a building with as many possible golden ratios. I used a free soft ware, devloped by google, called Sketchup. It’s pretty much a simpler version of AutoCAD.

I first did a quick google search for architectural designs that showed the golden ratio

And I then came up with a design and made a sketch of it.

I talked with my dad about possible ways to create a 3D model of my design and he told me about Sketchup. I decided to go with it, mostly because it was the least time consuming. I spent the next 2 weeks making my design come to life. I think the total amount of time I spent on the design was at least 8 hours. If I had gone with AutoCAD or something more complex I wouldn’t be able to get the project done on time.

During each design sessions I did I created little sketches with all of the measurements to make sure I had the right information. At the very beginning of the design phase it took me a little while to get into a routine with calculating everything but after about 3 hours I was able to figure it out.

Probably the longest thing to do was the stairs. Although they didn’t comply with the golden ratio it still took forever to draw out each individual step and then make sure they had depth and became 3D.

I also spent some time painting and putting the finsihing touches on the design. The colour scheme I used was to reflect the biome/terrian the house would be located. I used brown colours based off of my grandma’s house in Kamloops which has similar colours to the rocks found in the region. It’s designed to be somewhere in the desert but not in a desert like the Sahara desert, more like in the state of Arizona or something more humid and naturally hot.

After doing all all of the design I spent a lot of time figuring out how I was going to transfer it to my iPad. I tried over 7 apps and finally got one that worked, it still didn’t show everything aspect of the model. We also had to include a write up or overlay that described our math behind our design. Since I used sketch up, and it pretty much wont allow an overlay without messing up the entire thing, I did a write up. I pretty much went over each section, I divided the house into three, and showed my sketches for each part.

I won’t go into all of my math, because it’s pretty long, but I will give you all an example of the process I went through.

The spiral has 113.1375’ as 1 and 183.056475’ as 1.618. 56.56875’ is equal to 1 over 2 (sorry but WordPress doesn’t like it when I put in euquations) and 126.487725’ is  equal to the square root of 5 over 2. (Confusing right?)

After finishing everything I then presented my project. It was definetly one of the longer ones, but that’s because of all of the math I did.

This was probably my favourtie math project so far this school year. I really liked how I was able to incorporate something I wanted to do and I was able to learn new skills. It was a little stressful at times, because I wasn’t able to import the design into my iPad for about a week, but in the end I am really proud of what I was able to achieve and I wouldn’t change anything about the design or project.