The physics of... soccer balls?

[Gui Cavalcanti]

Has anyone ever thought about that? The physics of soccer balls are amazing. The way hexagons and pentagons interact to form it's surface is nearly impossible to imitate on a computer, even though you're given a couple of easy things:

- All the sides of all the polygons are identical
- There are 12 pentagons
- There are 20 hexagons

Given that, you'd think it'd be easy to do the math on, but no! It took one of my teammates and I about 2 hours to wade through some math to eventually find some solution for the angle between hexagons we deemed correct. Any other random physics concepts you've found completely mind-boggling that have to do with every day objects?

(excuse the randomness )