Dicey Participles

skeptv:

Hexaflexagons 2

Oct. 21st is the annual Celebration of Mind, in honor of Martin Gardner. Maybe you’d like to host or attend a flexagon party sometime around then, or learn about other awesome Martin Gardnery things. Here’s the hexaflexagon party website: http://www.puzzles.com/hexaflexagon/

For inspiration, here’s pictures and stories from epic events in past years: http://www.puzzles.com/hexaflexagon/aroundtheworld.html

This video is based on, and in honor of, Martin Gardner’s column from 1956, “Hexaflexagons,” which can be found here: http://maa.org/pubs/focus/Gardner_Hexaflexagons12_1956.pdf

Historical Note: This video is based on a true story. Arthur H. Stone invented the Hexaflexagon and started a flexagon committee with his friends Tuckerman, Feynman, and Tukey (who all later became well-known in their respective fields). Tuckerman invented the Tuckerman Traverse, and Feynman invented Feynman Diagrams (not to be confused with Feynman Diagrams in physics, which is probably why flexagon diagrams are usually not called Feynman Diagrams anymore). The details of their interactions and dialogue, however, are my own invention.

-Feynman stuff is from the biography “Genius,” by James Gleik, p. 103-104
-The story of how Gardner learned about flexagons is from “An interview with Martin Gardner” in the June/July 2005 Notices of the AMS, p. 602-611
-Other historical information, including the text and names on some of the letters, are from Gardner’s original article: http://maa.org/pubs/focus/Gardner_Hexaflexagons12_1956.pdf

Thank you to the G4G-CoM committee for helping track down information, especially John Railing and Stan Isaacs for finding these sources.

Also check out flexagon.net, a pretty good resource for patterns for flexagons of many types, and of course the wikipedia page on flexagons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexagon And on Martin Gardner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_gardner

Associated twitter accounts are @g4g_CoM (Gathering for Gardner Celebration of Mind) and @WWMGT (What Would Martin Gardner Tweet?) and, as always, I am @vihartvihart

Card sculptures are by my dad, George Hart. He’s got a video about them on his channel: http://youtu.be/YBUEYrzMijA