[HN Gopher] Hexaflexagons [video] (2012)
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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...
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