Stereographic Projection

July 12, 2018

This neat model demonstrates how stereographic projection maps a point on a sphere to a point on the plane, using a light source and shadows!

Curves on the sculpture cast shadows, mapping them to a straight line grid on the plane of the floor below.

You can see the effect if you put a light source at the “north pole” of this sculpture

Material

Since we’ll be working in the dark anyway, I printed this with Glow in the Dark PLA by Gizmo Dorks. The phosphorescence effect isn’t as pronounced as well as the T-Rex model:

trex 1

I would definitely like to examine more models that make use of light and shadow in this way!


Profile picture

Written by Andrew Dalgleish who lives and works in San Francisco building useful things. You should follow them on LinkedIn