My favorite toy! Anyone wanting to experience the mystery of geometrical wonders first-hand won't outgrow this one... A stellated dodecahedron made with Zometool hung above my office cubicle for years when I worked in California... :-)

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Product Description

The ideal set for exploring relationships between Platonic solids, tilings, foreshortenings, packings, and more. With 484 pieces you and your family will never run out of ideas for fun building.Add the Zome Lesson Plans and you're ready for homeschooling. Check out the Creator Kit for the classroom.�484 Parts: 100 white nodes, 64 each of 3 lengths blue struts, 40 each of 3 lengths yellow struts, and 24 each of 3 lengths red struts. Concise color instruction booklet included. Sorting tray is not included; individual parts come packed in plastic bags.Award Highlights: Parents' Choice: Gold Award 1999 Dr. Toy: 100 Best Children's Products 1999Includes interactive DVDAges 6+Swallowing danger. Not for children under 3 years of age.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50716 in Toys & Games
• Brand: Zome
• Dimensions: 3.70 pounds

Amazon.com Teacher Review
It was originally designed as a system for building zonohedral domes. But the Zometool soon found itself with multiple other uses: recreating crystals and illustrating abstract topics such as cyclotomic polynomials and algebraic integers--and building everything from bridges to stick-style sculptures of Daddy. (Not to mention making some spectacular bubble wands!) Why? Because unlike some construction products of its genre, the creations you build with it actually stay put together; because it's so open-ended that it lends itself to thousands of imaginative sculptures--and because as a mathematical and scientific tool, there simply isn't anything else like it. The Zome System Explorer Kit contains 384 finely tooled, color-coded stiff plastic rods of varying lengths and 100 ball-type connectors. Kids can put them together to form basic shapes (triangle, rectangle, square) and build ever more complex creations out of their own imaginations or by following the instruction booklet. They may not realize it's an icosahedron they're fabricating, but the experience will stand them in good stead later in geometry class. The set comes with two manuals, both of which have their limitations: Manual 2.0 is a colorful booklet that requires some adult interpretation; it could easily be rewritten LEGO-style to spark even more interest and understanding among nonreaders. The black-and-white, 40-page Manual 1.2 contains a few typos and grammatical errors; it leaps ahead to much more advanced terminology and is packed with instructions and information of much greater complexity. This could either intimidate students or spur them on to new discoveries, depending on how it's approached. If left to themselves, some kids will go through a building phase and then leave it in the closet while others will use it for years. As a classroom learning device, the Zometool could work miracles for those who have a tough time visualizing abstract concepts. --A former home school educator, Julie Robinson currently manages a hands-on lab employing three gifted and professional toy testers ranging in age from 5 to 12.

From Parents' Choice®
Designed from profound geometric principles, the inventive Zome System Explorer Kit teaches geometric and visual skills. Imaginations ignite as kids learn to untap their ability to build in 62 directions in space. Challenging tho ught-provoking "play" allows kids to construct cells, crystals, DNA, domes and bridges. A 1999 Gold Award Winner. Ages 6 and up.(Parents' Choice®)

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Customer Reviews

Zome is great.
I love this product. I recommend the advanced math kit, without the packaging, since it seems to have the best price per part of any zome kit (1308 pieces and I've seen it somewhere online for $79 plus shipping if you buy it without the case).
You can make really neat geometric objects (can find some of these with Google), and although my 3-year old is too young for Zome he benefits too because I made him a very nice bridge over which his toy train runs. It'll be great when he's a bit older to have him play with this and pick up some math in a fun way.

Great toy for adults - Great teaching tool for kids!
I purchased the zome system with a pretty good idea of what Iwas getting and I discovered my expecations were met! As a teacher of organic chemistry, models are completely necessary to fully understand the subject matter. The zome system offers a wide variety of geometries and symmetries to explore. A note on the Explorer Kit, though. There aren't enough blue struts to make buckyball (truncated icosahedron) I recommend the next level up! END

Zome System is tops in the constructional toy market!
I had a chance to review Zome System recently and was very impressed with the opportunity it provided for creativity as well as the overall simplicity of the system. I think back to the legos I played with as a child to find a comparison; It is the only other toy system I have used which provides the same amount of creativity. I am a person who likes to build things and with the correct number of Zome System pieces, I can build almost anything, from functional implements to artistic representations of common objects. Because of the ease of use of the system, I am sure there are several more applications for Zome System which I have yet to discover. I believe that Zome System would make a great gift for almost any occasion and I hope to give it as a gift to friends and family alike.