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Explorable Flexagons: Learn to create and flex flexagons (2020) (loki3.com)
32 points by PaulHoule 8 hours ago | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments





There's a Mexican sculptor (Sebastian [0]) that has made massive flexagons (or something similar, cube-based) out of sheet metal. At some point he sold books and kits for making them out of cardboard, I had one or two, super cool stuff

[0] https://galeriamonicasaucedo.com/artista/sebastian/66e23dbdc...


These things are super cool, I had this domain bookmarked!

When I was bored in school, I'd make kaleidocycles (a 3d but less interesting flexagon) with a sheet of paper, a pencil, a ruler, some scissors, and a glue stick. Once I learned Illustrator I began to make some custom printed designed ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidocycle


I remember kids in high school playing with these in the late 1980s.

This book has some nice cuttable flexagon templates on thicker paper, with designs: https://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Flexagons-Hexaflexagons-Oth...

The designs are fun, although I find that the thicker paper actually makes them a bit harder to fold and flex than typical printer paper.

If you find flexagons interesting, you might like trying to find a copy of Martin Gardner's "Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversions" at your local used book sale. The first chapter is about flexagons and it gets better from there! Wonderful car ride, plane, etc. distractions.

https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-American-Mathematical-Puzz...


If I remember right, the "Of Man and Manta" [1] trilogy by Piers Anthony [2] was about a group of dimension travelers who came to see flexagons as a model for their dimension traveling network

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Man_and_Manta

[2] before Xanth became his albatross


Looks like vi heart took down all of her youtube videos - which is where i first learned of flexagon.

Sad to hear! I noticed that some are available through the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/Hexaflexagons


That's heartbreaking to hear. I wonder what happened to vihart. Her videos were so creative and fun.

nooo i hate this is how i found out. i miss the hexa flexa mex. she definitely influenced how i would doodle mathy stuff in class growing up



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