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How to Make a Buckyball Cube

Buckyballs are small magnetic balls that can be shaped into a veriety of figures. A complete set consists of 216 balls. Keep them on your desk as an office toy, as the Buckyball creators at Zoomdoggle suggest, or grind them in your hands to relieve stress. Learn patterns or unleash your creativity by discovering new structures and forms. The classic Buckyball pattern is the cube. It looks simple, but the balls' magnetic polarity can make it quite challenging, as one side of each ball attracts and the other side repels.

Things You'll Need

Complete set of Buckyballs

Instructions

- 1
  Pull one ball away from the group cluster and allow the rest to follow. Form all the balls into a single-line strand. If the strand breaks, simply reattach it and continue pulling.
- 2
  Start at one end of the strand and count 36 balls. Fold the strand after the 36th ball to line up directly with the next 36 balls on the strand. Do not allow the balls to interlock. Make sure they line up perfectly, one next to the other.
- 3
  Fold the strand again to line up the next 36 balls directly with the previous 36 balls on the strand.
- 4
  Continue folding the strand after every 36 balls until you reach the end of the strand. You should have a rectangle that measures six by 36 balls.
- 5
  Count six balls in from one end of the rectangle. Fold this square of balls in a layer onto the rest of the rectangle. Make sure the balls line up directly next to one another and do not interlock.
- 6
  Turn the shape over so the square is on the bottom.
- 7
  Fold the rectangle on itself again after every sixth ball, adding another layer to the emerging cube. Be careful that the balls do not interlock.
- 8
  Continue folding in the layers until you reach the end of the rectangle. You will have a cube six balls tall, six balls wide and six balls deep.

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