Undergraduate /
Discovery a math secret [4]
Can anyone help me to improve the personal statement. I tell a experience when I was 6th grade. (Making cardboard toys and models is my hobby since I was a child). I fear it is hard to understand. :(
EssayThis day was devoted for X5. Some days before, from a funny math book, I had learned about one of the most beauty of the Creator that there are only five regular polyhedrons: tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron, which I had called from X1 to X5 because their scientific names made me, only a 6th grade student, no sense. I had been familiar with X1, X2, X3 and had done X4 the day before. I attach me on the chair with the scissors, cardboard and glue throughout an hour to draw, cut and stick the equilateral triangles together. Finally, the "masterpiece" is done, but distorted and dirty because of the glue. The reason is obvious: there are so many joints. I ignored its ugly; the next must be exquisite. I lifted up and admiringly watch it, then slightly pressed it. Oh, it remorselessly broke before my very eyes. There was no excuse for the weakness of the structure. I must find a new way to make X5 more firmly.
I glued the joints again and scrutinized X5 from all direction. How to make it more firmly? Many ideas run through my mind. My mind flied. It has a charm beauty... the perfection of Creator... like regular hexagon... equilateral triangle. Ahaaaaaa!!! My eyes flashed and I burst out laughing (sometimes, I acted crazily like this when sank into the cardboard.) When I gashed a solid X5 along the edges of a triangle on its face to the center, what could I take out? It must be an X1 (tetrahedron). Why? Because it is not incident that the earth is sphere and that a regular hexagon could be cut to exact six equilateral triangles; all are the corollaries of the greatest mystery of nature: "the Creator always creates the perfection". And I bet that the Creator didn't miss the chance to back up the mystery once more. If I do so with other triangles of X5, I would take out total twenty X1s. This meant that a solid X5 is the result of correctly sticking twenty solid X1 pieces. Immediately, I rushed to make X1s, being jubilant of discovering a great secret of Creator. After finishing pieces, I glued them, 2nd, 3rd; I was fluttering... 18th, 19th... but 20th did not fit the hole. Each time I stuck one side, another separated. I try again and again, but it cannot fit. I wanted to cry. I was very dexterous but Creator was never wrong. I decided to make X1s again. This time, though they were bigger and more precise, I still received the same. Was the mystery fatally squeezed by the betrayer X5? I wrote all into my notebook and decided to keep the secret for my own until I could answer it.
Three years passed. Soon after gaining enough knowledge of geometry and trigonometry, I returned to discover the buried secret. And the truth was exposed. I closed my eyes. If the Creator had done a good job, if X5 had not been a betrayer, if man could correct the Creator's mistake...
