Vegreville egg is a giant sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

 of a pysanka

Pysanka

A pysanka is a Ukrainian Easter egg, decorated using a wax-resist method. The word comes from the verb pysaty, "to write", as the designs are not painted on, but written with beeswax...

, a Ukrainian style Easter egg

Easter egg

Easter eggs are special eggs that are often given to celebrate Easter or springtime.The oldest tradition is to use dyed or painted chicken eggs, but a modern custom is to substitute chocolate eggs, or plastic eggs filled with confectionery such as jelly beans...

. It is the largest pysanka in the world. The work is built of an intricate set of tiled two-dimensional congruent

Congruence (geometry)

In geometry, two figures are congruent if they have the same shape and size. This means that either object can be repositioned so as to coincide precisely with the other object...

 equilateral triangle

Triangle

A triangle is one of the basic shapes of geometry: a polygon with three corners or vertices and three sides or edges which are line segments. A triangle with vertices A, B, and C is denoted ....

s and star-shaped hexagons fashioned over an aluminum

Aluminium

Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al, and its atomic number is 13. It is not soluble in water under normal circumstances....

 framework. The egg is 31 ft (9 m) long and three and a half stories high, weighing in at 2.5 t (5,512 lb).

Located in Vegreville

Vegreville, Alberta

-Notable Vegrevillans :*Brent Severyn, former NHL defenseman*Cam Cole, Canadian sports writer*Laurence Decore, lawyer, former mayor of Edmonton, Alberta, and former leader of the Alberta Liberal Party*Roderick Fraser, former president of the University of Alberta...

, a town in Alberta, Canada, the sculpture was commissioned for the 1975 centennial

Century

A century is one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages .-Start and end in the Gregorian Calendar:...

 of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police , literally ‘Royal Gendarmerie of Canada’; colloquially known as The Mounties, and internally as ‘The Force’) is the national police force of Canada, and one of the most recognized of its kind in the world. It is unique in the world as a national, federal,...

. Vegreville received a grant to construct the egg, a nod at Ukrainian culture in Canada, and specifically at early Ukrainian

Ukrainian Canadian

A Ukrainian Canadian is a person of Ukrainian descent or origin who was born in or immigrated to Canada. In 2006, there were an estimated 1,209,085 persons residing in Canada of Ukrainian origin, making them Canada's ninth largest ethnic group; and giving Canada the world's third-largest...

 settlements east of Edmonton

Edmonton

Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...

.

Though the surface area of an egg can be difficult to solve mathematically, the enigma of how to assemble two-dimensional tiles onto a three-dimensional egg was eventually solved by Ronald Resch, a computer science professor from the University of Utah

University of Utah

The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...

, with the assistance of computer-aided design

Computer-aided design

Computer-aided design , also known as computer-aided design and drafting , is the use of computer technology for the process of design and design-documentation. Computer Aided Drafting describes the process of drafting with a computer...

. Resch tiled the egg uses at total of 1108 congruent equilateral triangles, 524 concave hexagons (3-pointed stars), 3,512 visible facets, 6,978 nuts and bolts and 177 internal struts. The tiles range in thickness from 1/16 in to 1/8 in and are jointed at angles ranging from 1° at the center to 7° at the tips. These are held together by an internal framework of radiating spokes, which connect the egg's "shell." The pysanka leans at a 30º relative to the base, and turns with the wind similar to the motions of a weather vane

Weather vane

A weather vane is an instrument for showing the direction of the wind. They are typically used as an architectural ornament to the highest point of a building....

.

The egg is one of the main tourist attraction

Tourism

Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...

s along the Yellowhead Highway

Yellowhead Highway

The Yellowhead Highway is a major east-west highway connecting the four western Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Although part of the Trans-Canada Highway system, the highway should not be confused with the more southerly, originally-designated...

, and thousands of tourists visit it yearly. It is located at the north side of the bypass Alberta Highway 16A in Elk's Park.