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Instructions to Make a Buckyball Cube

Buckyballs are a collection of 216 small magnetic balls that can be shaped into countless forms and figures. Zoomdoggle created Buckyballs as a desktop toy. The balls have polarized ends, meaning that one side of a ball repels and the other side attracts. This allows for the construction of unlimited free-form shapes, but polarization can be challenging when trying to construct a dense, compact figure like a cube. Making a cube is simple as long as you're sensitive to the balls' polarity. If you feel like the balls are repelling while trying to construct the cube, rotate them slightly to set things right.

Things You'll Need

Set of Buckyballs

Instructions

- 1
  Form a single strand of all 216 balls. Do this by pulling one ball away from the group and allowing the other balls to follow, forming a long strand.
- 2
  Start at one end of the strand and count six balls. Fold the strand after the sixth ball, allowing the six end-balls to line up perfectly with the next six balls on the strand. Make sure the balls don't interlock but instead sit directly next to one another.
- 3
  Fold the strand again, allowing the next six balls to line up perfectly with the previous six balls.
- 4
  Repeat Step 3 until you reach the end of the strand. You should have a two-dimensional rectangle measuring six balls by 36 balls.
- 5
  Start at one end of the long side of the rectangle, and count six balls in. Fold the rectangle on top of itself after the sixth ball, allowing the balls to line up directly next to the neighboring balls. Do not allow the balls to interlock.
- 6
  Fold the rectangle on itself again as in Step 5, creating another layer to the emerging cube.
- 7
  Repeat Step 6 three more times to finish the cube.

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