# why are soccer balls have pentegon patches? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 21, 2003, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943 "2003-07-21T16:39:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![lestat915](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lestat915](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lestat915)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/1 "2003-07-21T16:39:24Z")
Ok here is a good question why do soccer balls have pentegon patches, and baseball has two stiches, and basketball have the black stripes? is it for a reason or do they just do it to tell the difference? ---
**Author:** ![PatriotX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@PatriotX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotX)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/2 "2003-07-21T16:49:48Z")
The pentagonal patches make the hexagonal ones fit together in a spheroid. ---
**Author:** ![mascaroni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/dc4da7/32.png) [@mascaroni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mascaroni)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/3 "2003-07-21T16:56:32Z")
Soccer balls have pentagons because if they were made entirely of hexagons, you couldn’t make a sphere. God was so impressed he invented [Buckminsterfullerine](http://www.udel.edu/fth/java/MoleculeViewer/bucky.html) Baseballs (and cricket balls) are smaller and use a softer skin over a hard interior, allowing for more stretching of the skin. Basketballs… no idea. ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/4 "2003-07-21T17:06:20Z")
A baseball has more than two stitches. However it just has two seams. The two parts of the cover of a baseball surround a core of wound thread over a rubber or cork center. Very early basketballs had a seam on the outside like a football, but that was hard to dribble, for obvious reasons, so basketballs with inside seams were developed. The black stripes are just where the various panels of a leather (or faux leather basketball) are joined together. I think that rubber basketballs just have the stripes on them so they look familiar. ---
**Author:** ![msgotrocks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8edcca/32.png) [@msgotrocks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msgotrocks)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/5 "2003-07-21T17:10:40Z")
Okaaaay, then… Why do soccer balls have hexagonal patches? P.S. “So the pentagonal patches will fit” is **not** an acceptable answer. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/6 "2003-07-21T17:15:54Z")
Yes, it’s just so they can be stiched into spheres. Modern footballs (soccerballs) are made out of an inner bladder which holds the air (these days made out of rubber or a simpler synthetic material) surrounded by an outer stitched sphere of leather (usually a synthehic material nowdays), a bit like a tyre and an inner tube. Football maufacturers use various different designs, not necessarily the classic pentagons and hexagons design. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/7 "2003-07-21T17:18:26Z")
Soccer balls are based on a truncated icosahedron, which is composed of 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons. It’s one of the 13 Archimedean (semi-regular) polyhedra, and the one in which the two different surface shapes are most nearly equal in area, most closely approximating a sphere. Of course when the ball is inflated it’s basically a sphere. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/8 "2003-07-21T17:19:50Z")
> [@](#): > > Okaaaay, then… > Why do soccer balls have hexagonal patches? > P.S. “So the pentagonal patches will fit” is not an acceptable answer. A polyhedron composed only of pentagons is a dodecahedron, and is a lot “rougher” and further from a sphere than the buckminsterfullerene/soccer ball shape made of hexagons and pentagons (I knew the name of this form at one time, but I’ve forgotten it). A form made only of hexagons would, of course, be a flat plane. I suppose you _could_ ,ake an icosahedron, a shape with five equilateral triangles meeting at each vertex. But that’s a _lot_ of stitching, and I suspect it wouldn’t be as strong as a soccer ball. Most of the other Platonic solids and quasi-Platonic solids made out of regular polyhedra are much further from a sphere, and wouldn’t roll in a pleasing way after you kicked them. A game played with a sewn tetrahedron would, I grant, be as interested as a kick-ball game played with an American football, though. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/9 "2003-07-21T17:25:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by BobT \* > **However it just has two seams. The two parts of the cover of a baseball surround a core of wound thread over a rubber or cork center.** I’m pretty sure a baseball has _one_ seam. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/10 "2003-07-21T17:31:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CalMeacham \* > the buckminsterfullerene/soccer ball shape made of hexagons and pentagons (I knew the name of this form at one time, but I’ve forgotten it). Truncated Icosahedron. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/11 "2003-07-21T20:29:36Z")
If you want to know why a soccer ball has exactly 12 pentagons, here is the straight dope. Consider a polyhedron that is constructed so that exactly three edges meet at each vertex. Suppose the number of triangles in the polyhedron is a\_3, the number of quadrilaterals is a\_4, the number of pentagons is a\_5, heptagons is a\_7, octagons is a\_8 and so on, then 3a\_3 + 2a\_4 + a\_5 - a\_7 - 2a\_8 - 3a\_9 - … = 12 So you could have four triangles or 6 squares or 12 pentagons or 2 triangles plus 3 squares or any of these plus an arbitrary number of hexagons. If you have only pentagons and hexagons, then then the number of pentagons must be 12. As for the 20 hexagons, well that makes a nice semiregular polyhedron. A science-fiction writer once imagined a world that was divided entirely into hexagons. By the second edition of his books, he had been apprised of the error of his ways and corrected it. Of course, you could have more than three edges meeting at some vertices, but I think that only makes it worse. Such as an octahedron with 8 triangles, 4 meeting at each vertex. ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/12 "2003-07-21T20:37:38Z")
It shoudl be noted that footballs havign this shape is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the sixties a rectangular patchwork system was still in use. You can see a lot of the different types of balls here: [http://www.soccerballworld.com/History.htm](http://www.soccerballworld.com/History.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2003, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-soccer-balls-have-pentegon-patches/189943/13 "2003-07-21T21:11:41Z")
I think that the question in the OP wasn’t so much about any particular ball, but why different sorts of balls have different patterns of covering. In comparing a baseball or a softball to the larger ones, I suppose it would be because of the different size or composition (wound twine inside, rather than air). But why would a soccer ball use a different covering scheme than a basketball?