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One of the world’s top universities has requested a copy of ‘Bille’ discovered at BME
2026. 03. 25.
From now on, the first monostable tetrahedron will be part of the ETH Zurich collection, alongside ‘Gömböc’. The first microgravity experiments using it could begin soon.
ETH Zurich has added the geometric object named Bille, discovered at BME, to its collection of scientific instruments and teaching materials, according to the Swiss university’s website. A model of the first monostable tetrahedron was presented by Gergő Almádi, who wrote his thesis on the subject at BME last year — and has since become a student at the Pál Csonka Doctoral School of the Faculty of Architecture. (Pictured above with Roberta Spano, the collection’s co-curator.)
“After news of the Bille spread in the international scientific press, ETH contacted us, expressing interest in adding one to its model collection. Due to the high production costs, we were able to make this happen with the help of private sponsorship; our sponsor is Ottó Albrecht, owner of Cashline Holding,” said Gábor Domokos, a professor at the Department of Geometric Modeling at BME, to bme.hu. Together with Gergő Almádi — and with the collaboration of Robert Dawson, a mathematics professor at St. Mary’s University in Canada — he created Bille.
| According to the rankings by the Quacquarelli Symonds higher education analysis center, ETH is the top university on the European continent; worldwide, it is surpassed only by institutions such as the UK’s Imperial College London, Oxford, and Cambridge, as well as the MIT, Stanford, and Harvard in the US. Its collection already included a model associated with Gábor Domokos: the Gömböc, discovered in 2007 and under the registration number ETHZ_MATH-MOD_0059 in the collection, is a convex, homogeneous three-dimensional solid with two equilibrium positions — one stable and one unstable. The Bille has been assigned the number ETHZ_MATH-MOD_0060, but it is currently still on display in the university’s main hall as a new acquisition. |
“Being included in the ETH collection is a huge deal. There are at most a dozen such model collections in the world, and this is one of the best-known and largest.
It also means a lot to BME that it is connecting in yet another way to a university that belongs to the world’s most exclusive elite,”
said Gábor Domokos.
Bille is the first four-faced ‘roly-poly’ object — it always tips back to the same side. Previously, something like that could only be built from structures with more than four sides, and few believed it was even possible to create one from a tetrahedron. This required unique geometry and special materials, but the creation of the structure is not only a design feat, it can also be of great practical use. Using the process employed in its development and the methods based on it, it is possible to prevent other three-dimensional shapes from tipping over using purely geometric means. This could lead to breakthroughs in areas such as the design of landing modules for space missions.
The first experiments are on the way
The first step on this path could be the experiment for which Professor Domokos recently won a grant through a competition. At the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Center for Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) in Bremen, they will be able to conduct tests with the Bille and even other objects for four days. “The laboratory is essentially a tower with a special elevator, where even NASA conducts gravity experiments. This will be a great opportunity; the only problem is that we can’t take Bille on a plane, because they’d hardly let it on board, and checking it as luggage would be too risky due to its fragility,” he added.
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photo: ETH