
An animal with a knack for flexing | Tangente
An animal with a knack for flexing
Les flexagones du Kangourou is a leaflet printed on thick paper, featuring a mathematical structure to cut out.


Les flexagones du Kangourou is a leaflet printed on thick paper, featuring a mathematical structure to cut out.


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Popularized by Martin Gardner, flexagons are geometric curiosities that sparked huge enthusiasm among the general public. Although their mathematical study began in the 1940s, they have not yet given up all their secrets.

The first hexagonal-faced flexagon studied had three stable positions. Methods were quickly found for constructing an associated hexaflexagon for a given number of stable positions — and even several different hexaflexagons…

Although he is known for his recreational mathematics and his work as a popularizer, Martin Gardner strangely never pursued a course of study in the discipline. Here are the surprising stages of his unusual path.

The flexacube and a more sophisticated form, the Yoshimoto cube, are three-dimensional versions of flexagons. Beyond their construction, these astonishing objects raise questions about the flexibility of polyhedra and formalize that question: under what condition does a solid remain rigid?
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