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.
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.
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.
