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Steve Waterman's father noticed his son's talent and curiosity about mathematics. When Steve was five years old his dad said, "There are three things that mathematicians haven't been able to figure out. The first one is trisecting an angle with just a compass and straight edge. The second is squaring a circle [starting with a circle and making it into a square of an equivalent area]. And the third is properly unfolding a globe onto a flat surface. Steve took on these challenges, and made numerous attempts to achieve them throughout his teenage years. His father wanted to inspire Steve, and it worked! He has spent his life in the relentless pursuit of things many others considered impossible. The Waterman Butterfly map is just one result.
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In 1996, Steve Waterman, an enthusiast of mathematics, physics and crystallography and a self-taught theoretical nuclear physicist, created a 14-sided polyhedral map based on fifteen years research on the mathematics of the close packing of spheres.
At the origin, his results were examined purely from a mathematical standpoint. Later on, unexpected findings emerged, connecting these equations with observable physical realities. As he expanded his investigation, it eventually lead to the generation of a different way to link together the fundamental concepts of space, time, matter and light. It even goes further by redefining each of these basic components.
Distortions occur in distances, or the angles, or the areas, or the shapes for every representation of the Earth onto a flat surface. Steve Waterman found a way to reduce the problems of distortion by projecting the sphere onto a polyhedron (central projection). Steve's "W5" polyhedron is a regular octahedron with the vertices truncated at the quarter of its edges.
The result is an intriguing world map in the shape of a butterfly. It has relatively good shape accuracy with minimal land breaks, and avoids the problem of "disorientation" that occurs with another polyhedral projection, Fuller's Dymaxion map. The equal area version of Waterman's Butterfly map was refined by a team of mathematicians and cartographers in 2006 and will be available in 2007.
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