More Escher roundup

Other Escher works have also been recreated in LEGO form, including ...

Day and Night by BrickWares.


Balcony by Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu


Drowned Cathedral by Minkowsky


Sky and Water I seen at Legoland


Reptiles by Profound Whatever


Double Planetoid at the Billund airport


Three Spheres II by Gwaehur


Rose by Aaron K


Drawing Hands by Ian Leino


... and by Littlehorn


... and by B.K.


... and by j p

Escher: Waterfall

A few takes on Escher's 'Waterfall':

Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu.

Henry Lim.

Jung von Matt advertising agency.

Legohaulic's Nightmare drew inspiration from Waterfall.

Escher: Belvedere

Belvedere has been another subject for LEGO Escher fans.

Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu.

Henry Lim.

Jung von Matt ad agency.

Brixe63, who has done a number of optical illusions, made some Belvedere-inspired bunk beds.

Escher: Ascending and Descending

Continuing with our look at M.C. Escher in LEGO form, another very popular work is Ascending and Descending:

Probably the earliest version was by Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu.

Henry Lim's version.

The advertising agency Jung von Matt made a "create the impossible" ad.

Puriri deVry.

Buge Fun.

Raphael Heusser.

Escher: Relativity

M.C. Escher is surely the most popular artist among mathematicians and scientists. His explorations of symmetry and tricks of perspective and perception and his playful use of geometry all explore themes that are important across all of these fields. Several LEGO builders have taken on Escher themes. The first prominent effort was by Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu, who recreated five different Escher works in the early 2000's. In 2005, Henry Lim was commissioned by the Hong Kong Science Museum to make his own takes on four Escher pictures. Others have explored this work in LEGO form as well.

Perhaps the most popular Escher work in LEGO form is Relativity. Here is a version by Andrew Lipson and Daniel Shiu.

And another by Henry Lim.

Paul Vermeesh just recently posted a Star Wars version (which is what prompted this post).

Profound Whatever did a space version.

NewRight did a castle version.

Here's a version by Supernerd23

Big Daddy Nelson built this vignette

Thanks to Nannan of the Brothers-Brick for tracking down a couple of those links.

Cyberknife

A CyberKnife is a robotic system to direct a carefully aimed beam of radiation to destroy a tumor. Radiation therapy works by hitting the cells with high energy sub-atomic particles. This radiation can damage cells by knocking electrons out of biomolecules. If electrons are removed from the DNA backbone, it causes the breakdown of DNA and the death of the cell. Dr. Rajesh Iyer, radiation oncologist with New Jersey CyberKnife and chairman of radiation oncology at Community Medical Center built this CyberKnife for his son.

Learning math

I've been using LEGO to help my kids learn math. Here my daughter is working on multiplication. She doesn't know it, though. She just knows that we're putting together stacks of two bricks, and counting the size of the resulting stack.



Then I taught her that we could write out the multiplication table we just built in bricks, where the 'x' stood for 'groups of', so 1 group of 2 is 2, 2 groups of 2 is 4, etc.

Hubble

The Hubble Space Telescope (on the right, by RomainGrosjean), has been in operation for the past 22 years. From its vantage point above the earth's atmosphere, it can take amazing high resolution images without the atmospheric distortion or light pollution that plague traditional observatories.

Spirit and Opportunity

The second rovers to land on Mars were Spirit and Opportunity as part of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. Touchdown occurred in 2004 with a mission designed to last 90 Martian days. Contact with Spirit was finally lost in 2010 while Opportunity continues to operate today, over eight years later. You can learn more about the Mars Exploration Rovers at the official NASA/JPL Mars Exploration Rovers website. Minifig scale rover by apojove.

Pathfinder

Apojove posted these pictures of his Mars Pathfinder, the unmanned probe that landed on Mars in 1997. He depicts it here as a tourist attraction in an imagined future. Interestingly, NASA recently released a request to future lunar explorers to please leave the Apollo landing sites alone to preserve them for future historians and to protect ongoing scientific studies.

Fibonacci

1,1,2,3,5,8,13... Fibonacci in LEGO form by Michaelpatrickryan and Nanley (Kate).

Mars Science Laboratory

A couple of days ago I posted the Curiosity, or the Mars Science Laboratory, by a then-unknown WAMALUG member. It turns out it is by Apojove, who was actually one of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers who helped design this probe.

VAB

Camelboy68 built this version of the Vehicle Assembly Building from the Kennedy Space Center. This building, one of the largest by volume in the world, was built to be large enough to assemble Saturn V rockets, and has been used since 1968 to prepare rockets for launch.

Even more Mars

The LEGO partnership with the Planetary Society and NASA mentioned yesterday had another cool aspect: LEGO on Mars. Each of the two landers launched in 2003 held a CD with the names of four million people who registered (for free, it was all about raising awareness). The disc was held by four LEGO-brick-shaped clamps and had the image of a minifig. BTW, this is only one of several partnerships that LEGO has held with NASA over the years. At some point I'll have to go back and do a comprehensive listing of all of the sets and other collaborations they've done.

More Mars

Following up on yesterday's post, I should note that LEGO has a history with Mars rovers. The LEGO Company partnered with NASA and the Planetary Society in a contest to name the Mars rovers that launched in 2003, with the winners coming up with Spirit (which operated on Mars from 2004-2010) and Opportunity (which is still operational today). As part of the deal, LEGO released a line of NASA themed sets, including 7469, Mission to Mars, and 7471, Mars Exploration Rover.

Mission to Mars

The Space Shuttle Discovery is now in place at its permanent home, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (in case you don't know, this is a huge complex outside of Washington DC near Dulles Airport - it's part of the whole Smithsonian, just not located down on the Mall near most of the other museums). It looks like WAMALUG recently displayed there, perhaps as part of events surrounding the opening of this new exhibit. A WAMALUG member, presumably TJJohn12, built these Mars probes. The first model is the Curiosity, a rover that is currently en route to Mars (set to land this August) with the mission to study the possibility that Mars ever supported life, collect data in preparation for a potential future manned mission, and to study the soil and geology of Mars. The second is the Mars Pathfinder, which landed on Mars in 1997 and operated for three months (in excess of its planned one month lifetime), conducting tests of the atmosphere and soil. The lander, dubbed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station unfolded to reveal solar panels and release a rolling robot named Sojourner.

Nitrous oxide dimer

Atoms are combined into molecules by covalent bonding, which involves the sharing of electrons. Two or more molecules will associate with each other by noncovalent interactions. These are weaker attractive forces, such as the coulombic attraction between partial charges. Nitrous oxide is a gas that has various uses, including as an anaesthetic and as a component of rocket fuel. In the gas phase, these molecules can come together in a variety of dimeric forms, as described by East and coworkers. Pasukaro76 made a LEGO version of the nonpolar N-in dimer (which happens to be the high energy conformation on the potential energy surface described by East).