5 Interlocking Tetrahedra

This model designed by Thomas Hull is quite a challenge to complete but well worth the effort. The units themselves are simple. (Francis Ow's 60 degree Unit) The puzzle comes from putting the bits together.

I have used 10 squares of paper in 5 different colours.  I made my life more difficult by using squares made from A6 paper.  I would certainly recommend using larger paper as it was quite fiddly.  As the pieces were quite small I also glued the pieces together to make sure they don't pop apart.

The instructions that I used are here https://static.mathigon.org/origami/star.pdf and here  http://origametry.net/fit.html on Thomas Hull's Origami Mathematics page.

Following the construction from images is tricky but I managed to work out the instructions from the two pages.  I found it useful to remember that each tetrahedron point comes through the base of another and vice-versa.  So for example on my model the point of the pink tetrahedron comes through the base of the yellow one.  The point of the yellow one comes through the base of the pink one.  I also found that the point of each tetrahedron is directly over a triangle of 3 edges. (the three that are the different colour to the point and the base it is passing through.)  I've included an image to explain what I mean.

Here the top of the pink tetrahedron comes through the base of the yellow.

(The top of the yellow comes out the base of the pink)

The top of the pink is over the triangle formed by the edges of the green, dark blue and light blue.

The resulting model is really nice and is something that I've been wanting to make for a while since I saw it as the profile picture of Clarissa Grandi's twitter account. https://x.com/c0mplexnumber