Vexing flexing

Neil Fullarton (University of Glasgow)

Friday 18th January, 2013 16:00-17:00 Mathematics Building, room 516

Abstract

In 1939, a group of notable graduate students at Princeton constructed out of paper an apparently flat polygon, with the interesting property that it may be 'flexed' inside out. This led to the discovery of infinitely many different so-called 'flexagons'. I will discuss this construction, and then consider the symmetries of such an object, showing that (oddly!) these symmetries almost never form a group.

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