I can’t explain the math at all, but I trust Chaim Goodman-Strauss, chair of the math department at the U of A, is getting it right in his sculptural collaboration with Fayetteville artist Eugene Sargent in their creation of the sculpture “Gyring Gyroid.”
The 120-pound steel sculpture was installed at the Gathering for Gardner in Atlanta, a math, puzzle and magic conference. Attendees assembled the sculpture, 42 individual steel units, at the conference. It’s the third sculpture that Goodman-Strauss and Sargent have installed at the garden. You can see Goodman-Strauss and Sargent collaborations in Fayetteville as well, in front of the mathematician’s house at 524 W. Prospect and another in the East Atrium of Mullins Library.
The gyroid, by the way, is “a certain infinitely connected triply periodic minimal surface” discovered by Nasa scientist Alan Schoen in 1970. Got that? Don’t know if it’s widening, either.
More images and detailed descriptions of the collaborations between Goodman-Strauss and Sargent are available here. Goodman-Strauss hosts a Martin Gardner-inspired Math Factor podcast that can be heard at here.