This continues on the idea of making curved shapes out of straight lines (see the previous hyperbola posts here and here). I made an sculpture using bamboo skewers and rubber bands. The object I made is called a hyperboloid which is the shape that you would get if you took a hyperbola and rotated it around a fixed axis. If built correctly, it would be curved even though it is composed entirely of straight lines. Mine is actually bent because I have not spaced to rubberbands correctly. The skewers are actually bent in a way that would make it so it would curve inward instead of outward so if I were to take the time to fix it, it would actually bend more.

One cool thing about building the shape using rubberbands is that the joints where the skewers meet are free to rotate meaning that you can expand and contract the object. In many of the pictures I have expanded it out using a cog from my orrery project.

I learned how to make this object here and it is not hard to do, but it does take a while.