The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet include drawings, charts, and lists accompanying the written elements. These drawings are purported to be done by T.S. himself, who also provides each with an explanatory caption that deepens the book's narrative. This is designed to mimic T.S.'s own habit of quantifying the world around him using cartography. Larsen has stated that this technique was not originally intended to be included in the book's format, finishing a complete first draft of the work before he "discovered the margins as a playground of T.S.’s mind." Larsen's parents were both visual artists (his mother a painter and photographer, his father a printmaker),
Geodesic dome resists sun and weathering. Some form of internal flashing or caulking must be placed over the joints to prevent drafts. The 1963 Cinerama Dome was built from precast concrete hexagons and pentagons. Given the complicated geometry of the geodesic dome, dome builders rely on tables of strut lengths, or "chord factors". In "Geodesic Math and How to Use It", Hugh Kenner writes, "Tables of chord factors, containing as they do the essential design information for spherical systems, were for many years guarded like military secrets. As late as 1966, some 3"ν" icosa figures from "Popular Science Monthly" were all anyone