[HN Gopher] Hexaflexagons [video] (2012) ___________________________________________________________________ Hexaflexagons [video] (2012) Author : mgdlbp Score : 397 points Date : 2022-07-24 14:28 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com) | Klaster_1 wrote: | Are there any practical applications to this, like making | nanoscale structures that can change particle or surface | properties? What's the smallest possible structure that enables | bending? This looks like one of those mundane problems that | yields unexpectedly impactful applications, like moire pattern | and magic angle graphene. | StephenAmar wrote: | I can think of https://youtu.be/ThwuT3_AG6w | tocs3 wrote: | I do not how practical but maybe a business card with different | bits of information depending on how it is folded. | tunesmith wrote: | The sixth video in the series is really a work of art: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIyruYQ-N4Q&list=PLaNzoFtkQ7... | I've thought a lot about arguments and premises and values and | conclusions and how it connects with frustration and humiliation | and shame, and really wasn't expecting all those subjects to come | in in a video about hexaflexagons. | someweirdperson wrote: | Quote from part 6: "The pink side with the yellow center is a | theoretical possibility that remains unobserved as in practice | it seems to be unopenupable." | nightchalk16 wrote: | http://loki3.com/flex/ | mdp2021 wrote: | I built so many, as a child, after reading Martin Gardner. Six | faces for the basic ones, then many more. I used the tape of | calculators with mechanical printing. | | Edit: looking for the original article from Martin Gardner; | meanwhile: the submitted video was commented by the Scientific | American (the original container) - | https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/flexagon-b... | | The original article was _Flexagons // In which strips of paper | are used to make hexagonal figures with unusual properties_, | published on December 1, 1956. The Scientific American has it | online, but paywalled. | | Found it: | | https://archive.org/details/martingardnerthecolossalbookofma... | | in _Martin Gardner - The Colossal Book Of Mathematics_ (page 385) | bmorton wrote: | mgdlbp wrote: | A recent submission[1] reminds me of the series on flexagons-- | folded paper with more than two faces that can be swapped via a | 'flexing' operation--by Vi Hart, whose videos on mathematics were | quite popular on YouTube around ten years ago. | | https://www.youtube.com/user/Vihart/videos?sort=p, | https://hn.algolia.com/?query=vi%20hart | | [1] 'folding' in a different sense: _How to fold a Julia fractal | (2013)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32209192 | mgdlbp wrote: | Interesting-- Vi Hart was a PI for YC Research's HARC (known | mostly for Bret Victor's Dynamicland) - small world | | https://hn.algolia.com/?query=harc | O__________O wrote: | Yep, Vi Hart even posted single comment on HN years ago: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=vihart | CliffStoll wrote: | Vi Hart's videos -- terrific! | sam_goody wrote: | I saw a reference to Martin Gardner's article when I was in, | maybe, 9th grade. | | So I went to the main branch of the NY public library ("reading | between the lions") and looked up the article on microfiche. It | was fascinating and fun - from how to make a row of equilateral | triangles with nothing more than a ruler, pen and paper. Many, | many hours were spent on the various flexagon derivatives. | | Years later, I made a JS page to combine images and print | hexaflexagons for my son's classmates. Had some fun with that as | well; it was much more confounding than I expected. | | Nowadays, microfiche is gone, the public library is unfortunately | not in most kids vernacular, and the attention span that would be | required to enjoy doing the math I did has been hijacked. (TikTok | !== figure-out-flexagon) | lmm wrote: | > Nowadays, microfiche is gone, the public library is | unfortunately not in most kids vernacular, and the attention | span that would be required to enjoy doing the math I did has | been hijacked. (TikTok !== figure-out-flexagon) | | The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt | for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter | in place of exercise. | bigdict wrote: | National education crisis averted: | https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/pubs/focus/Gardn... | O__________O wrote: | TikTok has a lot of creative content on flexagons: | | https://www.tiktok.com/tag/flexagon | | It's also not intended for long-form content, which is fine. If | someone is super interested in the topic, related math, etc -- | easy to find information elsewhere using search engine and the | short videos are much more likely to get someone's attention. | sam_goody wrote: | Oh sure, the internet has a lot more related info readily | available than was ever possible by using microfiche. | | And my phone can keep track of more more phone numbers than I | was ever able to memorize. | | But, _I_ know far fewer numbers now than I did as a kid, and | _my son_ will know far less than I did about flexagons. One | reason may be _because_ he knows it is readily available, he | won 't learn it himself. And one reason is because there is | _so much_ surface level learning available, which is so easy | and interesting to consume, that anything that takes work and | time is postponed, and eventually conditioned to be ignored. | | This is true for porn, fast-food, caffeine, or what have you | - easy, gratifying, effortless dopamine rushes will destroy | the positive (and ultimately more gratifying) activities that | the brain chemicals were supposed to encourage in the first | place. | | As someone who works with youth, the level of constant | distraction that the smartphone has created is not plausibly | denied. | MrsPeaches wrote: | A few random thoughts on this. | | 1. The main issue I see is that smartphones are primarily | devices for consumption (vs creation). The creation you can | do easily are well established tools (digital writing, | photography and videography). Where TikTok and Insta have | succeeded is simple editing tools for the latter two (+ | sharing and social algos etc). | | 2. To the action we as technologist need to take, is to | build tools for smartphones that have a focus on creation | rather than consumption (or to fuse the two, a la | explorable explanations). | | 3. It may also be that the smartphone is a broken paradigm | and we need to start thinking beyond smartphones, with a | keen awareness that powerful corporations have a strong | incentive to ensure that consumption is at the core of the | technology experience (e.g. Meta and VR). | syntheweave wrote: | It's very easy to turn the smartphone into a reasonable | creation tool, the trick is not act like the world ends | at the bounds of the device. | | Seeing smartphone software as the complete editing tool - | in the mold of desktop software - isn't that interesting, | creatively speaking. It's very precise to use software in | that way, to emulate professional workflows from | generations ago and create all sorts of shortcuts and | configurations. But it only affects decision-making | workflows in a limited sense, because what the precision | mostly does is pull you down the road towards polishing | your output more and more, making smaller and smaller | edits with more and more layers. Why are you polishing | it? If you exit the software and change mediums, you can | actually accomplish more with less, because then you can | just accept the limitations and finish. Software is often | at its best with mixed media approaches where it | supplements a few tasks with a light layer of edits, a | data processing step, or a preliminary design iteration. | But there are many traditional techniques and | technologies that don't need it, or amount to "we strap | some AI onto it to turn an imprecise machine into a | precise one". | | The consumption-device viewpoint of the phone is an | invention of the software industry. The reality is that | people are doing a lot of productive things just by | turning the phone into a portable scanner or audio | recorder. It's already the fastest way to grab references | for most media. If you set up a Bluetooth keyboard and a | stand, the small screen works fine for typing up run-once | code to solve immediate problems. The things blocking | creativity are a combination of the software ecosystem | being unready to deprofessionalize itself and exit the | industrialized "app" model(and it is unready - we have a | lot of maturation to do still to automate programmers out | of their jobs), and the atmosphere of social media to | engage in rat races for likes and follows, which is | caused through incoherent models of assigning credit and | blame, poor mechanisms of identity management, etc. | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | Counterpoint... there is too much information now. | | There is just too much to keep in a human brain. So, don't, | or, try and make an effort to separate the wheat from the | chaff and know where it's ok to give some up. No, your kids | will probably not know as much about an origami trick, but | they will know more about fusion or quantum computing or | nanobots than you ever will. That doesn't make them | disadvantaged or you better. They might know more about | Octaflexagons than you. | | I'm sure my grand father that worked in a foundry making | cast iron pipe would be horrified to discover I don't know | a lot about that process, but I could easily look up more | than he ever knew. | | So, this largely seems like a "kids these days" type of | rant. | tomxor wrote: | > [...] which is so easy and interesting to consume, that | anything that takes work and time is postponed, and | eventually conditioned to be ignored. This is true for | porn, fast-food, caffeine, or what have you - easy, | gratifying, effortless dopamine rushes will destroy the | positive (and ultimately more gratifying) activities that | the brain chemicals were supposed to encourage in the first | place. | | I read this to the backdrop of the movie "Idiocracy" | playing in my mind. Especially the "porn, fast-food, | caffeine" (aka Starbucks in the movie :P) | marcelluspye wrote: | collegeburner wrote: | your comment is agephobic | [deleted] | donclark wrote: | related: | | https://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/9781944686109?invi... | | https://www.etsy.com/listing/1231396190/tri-hexa-flexa-coder... | [deleted] | washyourdishes wrote: | I love to recommend ViHart's "Suspend your Disbelief" video: | https://youtu.be/deg1wmYjwtk | | It takes a special place in my heart for being able to break | apart and explain the effects of media and belief - especially of | media referenced within media. | Karellen wrote: | Also, "How I Feel About Logarithms": | https://youtu.be/N-7tcTIrers | | Genius. | Nebasuke wrote: | Thanks for linking this, I loved this video. I'm surprised it's | relatively unpopular compared to the rest of the channel, but I | suppose that supports her point... | JKCalhoun wrote: | I had not seen that one before. She truly is genius. | Despoisj wrote: | I made a 6 sided square flexagon puzzle for my dad, it's | surprisingly simple yet can take forever to solve. | | If interested, I've spend quite some time looking for more square | flexagons, and made one with 12 and another with 14 faces (along | with a puzzle version)! Tricky to build properly but stunning. | notRobot wrote: | I know about Vi Hart but hadn't seen this series before, I just | watched the first two videos and my mind is so blown right now, | this is incredible. I love fun math stuff like this. | Jtsummers wrote: | If you liked this, you ought to check out Gardner's articles | themselves: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner_bibliography#%2... | - That's a list of the books (and on that page many other | things) collecting Gardner's _Scientific American_ | "Mathematical Games" articles. | | https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/mathematics/s... | - First 4 of the reprints available here (or a bookseller of | your choice). | O__________O wrote: | (2012) is date for videos from this thread. | | Happy to see Vi Hart's still making videos: | | https://m.youtube.com/user/Vihart/videos | [deleted] | pixl97 wrote: | Hexagons are the bestagons | | https://youtu.be/thOifuHs6eY | O__________O wrote: | To be fair, hexagons alone are unable to form a sphere like | surface: | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=btPqKAGyajM | | And of course the odd response from the UK government to the | above petition was to basically say having a realistic football | signs would increase the odds of accidents, lol: | | https://aperiodical.com/2017/10/standupmaths-petition-has-ha... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-24 23:00 UTC)