Generated from the same geometry the printer is handed — the plate seen from directly above. It cannot show the relief, which is the part you have to hold.
The Mississippi
The basin that drains a third of a continent
Rain falling on a field in Montana and rain falling on a street in Pittsburgh both end up passing New Orleans. This puzzle is that fact as an object. The Missouri and the Ohio are the two largest pieces and they are startlingly different shapes: the Missouri long and dry and reaching for the Rockies, the Ohio compact, wet and folded into the Appalachians. The main stem is carved into the surface as a printed channel, so the assembled plate has the river running through it.
What a child works out
- Tributaries are territories that fit together like a jigsaw, because that is exactly what they are.
- Compare the Missouri and the Ohio: same river system, completely different country.
- Follow one drop from the ridge to the sea.
The plate
- Pieces
- 15 pieces
- Plate
- 250 × 176 mm
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 14.5 km
- Vertical exaggeration
- × 13.92
- Thickness
- 8.8 mm
- Smallest piece
- 101 mm²
- Fit
- 0.35 mm clearance
- Material
- PLA, printed in Switzerland
8 named; the rest are sub-basins the source data leaves unnamed.
B5 — the size of a school exercise book.
How much ground one millimetre of plate covers.
Height is stretched by this factor so the relief is readable at desk size.
Nothing is cut smaller than a child can pick up.
Printed in place, so every piece seats first time without sanding.
Every named piece
- Arkansas
- Arkansas 2
- Illinois
- Missouri
- Ohio
- Red
- White
- Yazoo
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 — A continent to one creek, cut by ridge lines with no borders
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North America by River
A continent divided only by where water goes
No countries, no states. Twenty-nine pieces, each one the whole territory that drains into a single river.
- Pieces
- 29 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 49.4 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 8 and up
- Price
- CHF 120.00
The Ohio
Where the Appalachians drain west
Eighteen pieces: the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Allegheny, the Monongahela, the Wabash and the ridges between them.
- Pieces
- 18 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 5.8 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 8 and up
- Price
- CHF 120.00
The Tennessee
The river that goes the wrong way
Seventeen pieces including the French Broad, the Holston, the Clinch, the Little Tennessee and the Hiwassee.
- Pieces
- 17 pieces
- Scale
- 1 mm ≈ 2.8 km
- Suitable for
- Ages 8 and up
- Price
- CHF 120.00