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The Magdalena relief puzzle, seen at an angle
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17 piecesColombia

The Magdalena

Colombia's river, from the Andes to the Caribbean

▶ Play it online

The Magdalena rises high in the southern Andes and runs north for more than 1,500 kilometres to the Caribbean at Barranquilla. The Andes split into three ranges in Colombia, and the river fills the long valley between the central and eastern ones, while the Cauca runs parallel in the next valley to the west and only joins it near the coast. Most Colombians live somewhere on this plate. The Sogamoso comes in from the eastern range as its own piece, and it is the next step down towards Barichara.

What a child works out

  • Mountain ranges can run side by side, with a river in every valley.
  • Two big rivers can flow next to each other for a whole country before they meet.
  • Where the rivers are is where the people are.
CHF 15.00

A download, to print yourself

  • A .3mf file with the colours already assigned
  • One STL per piece, for any other slicer
  • A print guide with the settings and the order to print in
  • For your own use; the licence is in the download

What you need to print it

  • A build plate that takes 176 × 250 mm: the Bambu Lab A1, P1S and X1C (256 mm) do, the A1 mini (180 mm) does not
  • A multicolour setup such as an AMS, for the colours as designed

Printed it? Got an idea?

Send me photos of your print and I'll add them to this page — or tell me what you'd add, leave out or change on The Magdalena.

The plate

Pieces
17 pieces

9 named; the rest are sub-basins the source data leaves unnamed.

Plate
176 × 250 mm

B5 — the size of a school exercise book.

Scale
1 mm ≈ 4.3 km

How much ground one millimetre of plate covers.

Vertical exaggeration
× 3.06

Height is stretched by this factor so the relief is readable at desk size.

Thickness
8.8 mm
Smallest piece
112 mm²

Nothing is cut smaller than a child can pick up.

Fit
0.35 mm clearance

Printed in place, so every piece seats first time without sanding.

Material
PLA, printed in Switzerland

Every named piece

  • Carare
  • Cauca
  • Cesar
  • Lebrija
  • Nare
  • Negro
  • Saldaña
  • San Jorge
  • Sogamoso

Zoom in, zoom out

A piece of each of these is the subject of the next one. Each plate is redrawn at its own scale, so it is a real map at every level rather than an enlargement of the one above.

Follow the water — The world to the creek below Barichara, cut by ridge lines

  1. Level 1
    The World1 mm ≈ 157 km
  2. Level 2
    South America by River1 mm ≈ 32.8 km
  3. Level 3
    The Magdalena1 mm ≈ 4.3 km
  4. Level 4
    The Sogamoso1 mm ≈ 1.3 km
  5. Level 5
    The Suárez1 mm ≈ 791 m
  6. Level 6
    Barichara1 mm ≈ 85 m

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