First steps to a geodesic dome
We have seen that any regular polyhedron can be inscribed in a sphere and thus
the vertices create a regular tessellation of the sphere. In the plane, we know
how to subdivide a triangular tessellation into a tessellation by similar triangles.
On the sphere, things are a bit different. Suppose we have a triangle ABC, then
the midpoint triangle A'B'C' is the triangle whose vertices are the midpoints
of the sides of ABC.

In the plane, all 4 small triangles are similar to ABC, so if ABC is equilateral,
so are all 4 triangles.
On the sphere, let us take ABC to be a 90-90-90 triangle. So in coordinate
space you can assume that A=(1,0,0), B = (0,1,0) and C = (0,0,1).
- Find the coordinates of A', B', C'. These are the midpoints of the sides
of the triangle ON THE SPHERE. Each of these points is distance 1 from
the center (0,0,0) of the sphere.
- The four triangles into which ABC is divided have 9 sides (some are shared).
Find the Euclidean distances (measured as straight-line distance in 3-space)
and also the spherical distances (measured in degrees or radians) of
each of these edges. You will save yourself a lot of work by noticing which
sides must be congruent.
- Find the measure of all the angles in the figure.
- Use the angle measurements to find the area of each of the 4 triangles,
given that the sphere has area S.
- Optional Extra Credit. Make a model from cardboard or straw of these four
triangles (fastened together). Even better, make the dimensions so that it
will fit exactly into a Lenart sphere. Or else, build your own spherical octant
or even make 8 of these models from straws and fasten them together to form
a polyhedron all of whose vertices lie on a sphere.