Maplesoft

Well, it's Friday, and the FIFA World Cup final is only days away, so time's running out to marvel at the math behind the Trionda ball design.

Let's take one more look.

Dive (pun intended) into the details here: https://bit.ly/4f56l94

Math gets even more fun when it moves!

Over the next two weeks, students in grades 6-8 will join Texas A&M University's SEE-Math summer program to tackle everything from geometry and topology to knot theory, graph theory, and cryptography. They'll be solving plenty of puzzles along the way, and even creating their own animations with Maple.

We're proud to have supported SEE-Math for many years and can't wait to see what this year's young mathematicians create.

Here's an animation titled "Ronaldo" created by one of last year's students. Fitting, don't you think? ⚽

What does a tetrahedron have to do with the FIFA 2026 World Cup ball?

According to our interns, quite a lot.

The official 2026 Trionda ball takes some of its inspiration from the simplest Platonic solid: the tetrahedron. But how do you transform a pointy polyhedron into a smooth sphere that performs on the pitch?

After reading Scientific American's exploration of the topic, they used Maple to investigate the geometry behind the design, revealing some of the math that shaped one of the world's most recognizable balls.

Curious about how it all works? Check out the full post: https://bit.ly/4f56l94