21–30 of 61 posts
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.
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 pa…
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.
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.
Hexagons are the bestagons https://youtu.be/thOifuHs6eY
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...
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 moiré pattern and magic angle graphene.
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 pa…
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.ycomb…
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 b…
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).
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.