I've actually thought about the curves and a possible sphere when playing with matches. But it's been long time since I've played with matches, and I never had enough free time to amass this many matches and put this experiment into action. YouTuber All Is Art did it.
What happens when you start gluing matches together? Because the heads are slightly wider than the wooden bodies, they begin to form a sphere. This was an experiment in how many matches it would take to get all the way around to make a perfect globe. After months of gluing and gluing and gluing we made it to the other side.
The answer is 42,000, give or take a few matches. What do you do with this sphere afterward? Light it up, of course!
Don't let the length of this video deter you- that all happens in the first three minutes. Then we get to see it from all angles, then in slow motion. -via Geeks Are Sexy