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.