Building Arizona Panel Design

The fall semester for Arizona's elementary school students will kick off the Building Arizona Science Project. 

Developed at EVIT (East Valley Institute of Technology), the Building Arizona educational program is designed to encourage elementary school children to enjoy studying geography, math, and sciences from geology to botany.

With the new laser cutter, all of the pieces to the panels - including the support structure, elevation posts, braces and tile mounts can be fabricated at EVIT by the Great Globe Team.  The parts, seen below, are cut out of acrylic plastic - Plexiglass.

In order to assemble the entire state of Arizona, approx. 6,000 tiles are attached to 90 panels (81 tiles each).   Each panel is mounted on a wheeled tripod.  When all the panels have been assembled Arizona students can move their panels together like giant jigsaw puzzle pieces to form the entire state in a matter of minutes.

When fully assembled, the State of Arizona will measure approx. 25 ft x 30 ft.

Student Participation

Students in participating science classes or home school programs may be assigned a single tile.  Each tile measures approx. 3.5" on a side of a triangle.  The student must learn how to use the online software to locate their "virtual tile".  Once they have "found" their assigned tile, they then have to learn how to identify where their tile is by using the latitude and longitude.  Each tile has the latitude, longitude, and elevation above sea level at the center of the tile.  Students will receive a 3D printed tile which must be painted according to the pre-existing coloring.  (The paint assure that the tile's colors will not fade over time from the sunlight.)

Additionally, the students must find and describe one hundred unique facts about their tile - which they will input into an online database.  In their research of the tile they may contact any of potentially hundreds of mentors - forest rangers, botanists, geologists, historians, engineers, etc. who can help them identify unique aspects of each tile.

Once a student has completed their assignment, tiles will be sent back to the participating "assembly schools" where other students will assemble the 800 parts of each panel - including 81 tiles.  As shown in the picture below, the clear plastic parts must be assembled, glued, and matched to the appropriate tile.  (Each tile support is unique in its length - which identifies its elevation above sea level within a very tight tolerance.)

So how big is Arizona?  The area of Arizona represents less than 1/2 of 1% of the global surface.  When the entire Earth is assembled with the Building Arizona system, the model Earth will measure 420 ft in diameter - the equivalent of a 42 story building.    If placed in downtown Phoenix this model of Earth would be the tallest edifice.

So what would the model of Earth look like when completed?  This artist's conception shows a Great Globe under construction.  It has an observation ring at the equator of the sphere.  The Earth would be tilted at 30 degrees to represent it accurately to the angle of its orbit around the sun at the latitude of Arizona (approx. 30 degrees).

Bryan Beaulieu, the entrepreneur and philanthropist responsible for the design of the Great Globe describes the culmination of the design process and how students will complete their project.

Panel Structure and Tile assembly

Geometry

In order to understand how an entire sphere can be divided into 10,500,000 triangular tiles, students will learn about icosahedrons, latitudes, longitudes, areas of spheres, areas of triangles, earth orientation to the sun, etc., etc.

One of the tools will be the Treasure Map, explaining the triangle system which uses  Base 9. 

Earth Elevations

The Great Globe is to measure 420 feet in diameter.  At that scale, Mount Everest is approx. 3.5 in. higher than central Arizona while the Marianas Trench is 4 inches below it.  That's a total of nearly 8 inches difference on the huge sphere.  From a distance of 200 ft (like seeing the real Earth from low earth orbit) those differences in elevation are not even discernible. 

Accuracy at the scale of 1:100,000

When added to another 10, 494,000 tiles, Arizona will comprise less than 1/2 of 1% of the Great Globe to be assembled in Arizona.

Building Arizona 2012 - Educational Program

Building Arizona 2012

 For the Arizona Centennial year 2012, the Great Globe project is kicking off it first educational program.  It is called Building Arizona.  It is being launched in Arizona schools this fall semester 2012 across the state of Arizona.  At the scale of 1:100,000 the entire state of Arizona is being printed out in 3D at the East Valley Institute of Technology on the Z Corp 3D printer dedicated to the Great Globe educational project.  Arizona will consist of approx. 6,000 triangular tiles measuring 3.5" on a side.  All together they will make the entire state measuring approx. 25' tall by 23' wide.

Those of you who have followed the progress of Bryan Beaulieu to engineer the entire Great Globe will appreciate the thousands of iterations and hundreds of models of the various components he has constructed.  He has worked the myriad technical details required to ultimately make a 420 foot diameter globe consisting of 10,500,000 triangular 3D tiles that all fit together with precision and engineering integrity.  This has included extensive study of the structures and sub-structures to hold 9 tiles to a panel, 9 panels to subpanels, etc.  Subpanels were to be made from sheet aluminum with aluminum rods holding the individual tiles and all to be simple enough to assemble for a 4th grader.

The final design, continuously optimized by Bryan to achieve the engineering integrity and strength, simplicity in fabrication, simplicity in assembly by the students and optimized for the best display to the public is completed. 

New Flat-bed Laser Cutter

A flat bed laser cutter has been added to the Great Globe Studio at EVIT which allows cutting of all of the structural parts to support tiles and all the pieces of the support panel in plexiglass.  Each panel will have it's own tripod on wheels which will initially act as the mounting platform for the students to install the tiles.  Each panel holds 81 tiles.  Each tile has a support made of 2 pieces that snap together.  Each set of nine panels has three support pieces.  In all, a Classroom Kit will consist of 81 tiles, 2 support pieces, approx. 2 dozen panel plexiglass pieces, and tripod assembly pieces.

When the students and their classmates have completed a panel and mounted it on its tripod, then all of the panels and tripods will be assembled at EVIT for the assembly of the entire State of Arizona.  When completed, the State model will measure approx. 25' high by 24' wide.  Like a giant jigsaw puzzle the panels can be all pushed together to form an aerial 3D map of Arizona with all of its canyons, mountains, deserts, lakes, streams, valleys, and cities accurately displayed.

Since it is the year of the 2012 Centennial, and students from around the state will participate in this educational program, the entire State - can be dissassembled back to its panels and tripods, packed into a 20' van and moved to new locations where students can reassemble the State.   The completed State of Arizona will be displayed around the state during the balance of the year 2012 and ultimately at the State Capital.

The 3D data for making the tiles has been provided by NASA. Programs for outputting the data to an online 3D Creator tool for students has been completed by former NASA engineers.  This allows students to input the number of a tile, e.g. D761685 seen below.  That back side of each tile displays the Latitude and Longitude and the elevation at the center.   With this information, the student can identify the location of the tile on sites like Google by inserting the latitude and longitude.

Typical tile - Tempe Lake - D761685

Tile Number, Latitude and Longitude and center elevation

Mountains of Arizona.....but where?

The Tile Creator program online form

 Any point on the globe can be located on one of the 10,500,000 tiles.

Our next entry will describe the other components of the education program and how schools and students can participate.