Make: Geometry

You can keep going as long as you want. The figure comes back around to

the original point at about √

17

. We created an OpenSCAD program called

theodorus.scad to let you create as big a spiral as you want (and can fit on

your 3D printer). Here is a spiral with 3 triangles (Figure 6-5), which ends at a

triangle with a hypotenuse of √

4

= 2.

Here is a spiral with 16 triangles (Figure 6-6, longest hypotenuse √

17

). The

model creates a solid base for the figure for easier printing.

In principle, you can measure off the square roots of numbers from 1 to 17

from the flat version, which might have been handy in the era before calcula-

tors. The OpenSC ...