The other night, while watching the
Science Channel, I saw a short blurb about a man named Simon Beck, who makes
giant “snow art” by making footprints artfully arranged in the snow. An engineer, turned cartographer, Simon
creates huge pictures in the snow, often very geometric (rather than free form)
designs, and executes them with mind blowing precision. How does he do this on
such a grand scale, using only his feet as the drawing tools?
With
Geometry of course…. and a compass.
He
figures out his designs based on a circle (360 degrees) and then uses a compass
(360 degrees) to keep himself on track as to which direction on the circle to
walk. He paces out the steps to determine the length of a given line, and
repeats the same pace in multiple directions according to his design.
This
example features the isosceles 60-degree triangles. The triangles are resized and repeated, and filled in with more footprints to create the "shading". His designs can take up to 12 hours to
complete, and he can walk as much as 25 miles to make one drawing. Pretty amazing application for Geometry!
