TV

Have a bigger-than-it-looks ball on New Year’s Eve

Each year, a lot of work and engineering is poured into the New Year’s Eve ball, officially titled — including branding — the Waterford Crystal Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball.

The ball, a geodesic sphere, is bigger than it looks on TV, measuring 12 feet in diameter and weighing in at almost six tons or 11,875 pounds, according to the Times Square Alliance.

It’s covered with 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles that range in length from 4 3/4 inches to 5 3/4 inches per side.

All of those triangles are cut in the new design, “Gift of Imagination,” which features a series of wedge cuts that allows the ball to display an endless array of patterns.

The triangles are bolted to 672 LED (light emitting diodes) modules that are attached to the ball’s aluminum frame. The ball itself will be illuminated by 32,356 Philips Luxson Rebel LEDs, in red, blue, green and white.

That’s a lot of math, but all told, the ball will able to create a palette of more than 16 million colors and billions of patterns to produce constant kaleidoscope effects while it awaits its drop atop One Times Square at 11:59 p.m. on December 31.