ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Stereotomy (descriptive geometry)

Do you know how you play with blocks and build towers? Well, imagine that you have a really big block and you want to make it into different shapes, like a pyramid or a dome. That's kind of like what stereotomy is!

Stereotomy is a way of using a special kind of math called descriptive geometry to figure out how to cut and shape big blocks of material - like stone, wood, or even ice - to create different shapes.

Think about when you're drawing a picture. You draw a line to represent something, like the edge of a table. But when you draw it on a piece of paper, it's just a flat line; you can't see how it looks in 3D. That's where descriptive geometry comes in! It's a way of drawing things on paper so that you can see what they look like in 3D.

With stereotomy, you can use this 3D drawing to figure out how to cut your big block of material into smaller pieces that can fit together to create your desired shape. This can be really useful for things like building arches, domes, or anything else that needs to be a specific shape.

So, in a nutshell, stereotomy is like figuring out how to use blocks of material to build big shapes, using special math and drawings that show the shapes in 3D.