Since about 1970, soccer balls have been stitched or glued together from 32 patches of material—12 of them five-sided and 20 of them six-sided. These patches are arranged so that each pentagon ...

Adidas kept the ball’s black-and-white color scheme until 2002, but the 32-panel buckyball might not stay in vogue much longer—Adidas launched its new generation of soccer balls for the 2006 ...

Picture a soccer ball and the image that comes to mind is probably a sphere made up of 32 smooth panels – 12 black pentagons and 20 white hexagons. But this conventional ball is oh so passe. In ...