Transparency Ball

I wanted to explore the properties of opacity, and so I decided to make a unit that had different layerings throughout. I went with the geometry of a soccer ball, because it took a reasonable amount of connections to make. My hardware piece was string, which served as the link between the hexagons and pentagons. Tying it together and orienting it into a functional 3D figure was the most difficult part.

I had assumed that 4-5 layers of transparency would produce a bundle that was relatively opaque, but I think there needs to be more layers for the effect to be more powerful. When held up to a strong light, it is still fairly translucent.

I initially had the misconception that holding the ball close to the light would project a large, crisp image to the ceiling. But in fact, the shapes and shadows are very blurry unless the distance from the object to the surface is small (at least, with one conventional light).





























































Below are some photographs of the shadows when held up to the light. I left the tape labels on there for an opaque comparison. We can start to see variances in opacity.


Some problems I had with this were getting the laser to cut through the plastic without melting it. It seemed like only one layer at a time was the best way to go about it. Plastic is also very hard to work with because it tends not to deform. It also slips and slides around and is difficult to handle. Putting a little water on it will make it stay in place.



For future assessments, I'd like to experiment with colors and cutouts, as well as more layers on each face.