Scutoid Tests: Help Wanted (and other updates) (Patreon)

Hello good humans! Today I'd like to recruit some of you (especially teachers and parents) to test some scutoid nets. Also I got my hands on the new merch and I just love the pins! And this week's sleets.

1. Scutoid Test Help

So with the help of Laura Taalman and Tom Ruen, we're exploring the possibilities of scutoid papercraft. Here's some of my tests:

There's two net sets we're working with so far (and a third, infinitely-packable one hopefully coming soon, so that a class can put all their scutoids together).

Note: these are drafts, so don't spread them too far until we get them in shape!

Here's the classic pair, where the two scutoids are the same and two fit together one way:

PDF available here: http://vihart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/scutoid-pair-papercraft-draft2.pdf 

And here's a scutoid quartet, where two copies of two different scutoids fit all together, which we adapted from this model by John Peplinski. This lets people work together in groups of up to four:

PDF is here: http://vihart.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/scutoid-quartet-draft1.pdf 

As I work towards finalized net designs and instructions, plus probably a video in the future and some teacher-facing instructions, it's time from some feedback, especially from teachers who have experience with hands-on paper math making activities, and parents with kids who can give me some pointers on what kids at what ages need how much help to create the scutoids.

The challenges are similar to paper polyhedra, but with the extra thing about the paper curving slightly, which may or may not add significant difficulty. Also there may be challenges in different people making pieces meant to fit together.

Here's my question-set that I hope you'll contribute to answering:

1. If this is to be a classroom activity, what age/grade would you recommend for it, and what difficulties can one expect?

2. How long would it take in a classroom setting for each age group?

3. What do you think of the size of the scutoids? What should I be thinking about when I consider ease of creating the scutoids vs how big they are when they're done?

4. Any ideas for how to display them without taking up all the floor/table space in a classroom? What do classrooms even have in them these days? Can we tape them sideways to the wall or thumbtack them from the inside to a ceiling tile or tape a magnet to the bottom of each to stick them on the board, or something? Or do they all go their separate ways after the activity?

5. What information should be on the scutoid printable? 

6. Should there be a separate worksheet? How would you connect this to the curriculum for a certain grade?

7. This design uses tape. Do classrooms have tape? Would a gluestick-friendly design be vastly more useable by teachers? (I'm not sure how easy glue would be given the stress the curvature puts on the seams, but I can experiment with it).

8. What about a party setting? Lots of cool people have hexaflexagon parties, so maybe scutoid parties are the next big thing! You'd serve pomegranates and... maybe monkey bread? Corn on the cob?

9. What am I not thinking of?

Thanks for being my guinea pigs! You can post your scutoid pictures and type up longer feedback on the community page if the comment format is too restrictive, or wherever you want and link in the comments.

2. New Pins Are The Best And Classiest Objects!

Look! I got the new pins in my hands now! They are so shiny and great, I love how they came out.

This is where you can find these classy triangles and other buyable objects: https://store.dftba.com/collections/vi-hart 

3. This Week's Sleets: a rant about chatbots

 🌨You know how chatbots space out their replies, and sometimes even spend a few minutes “transferring” you to "other" chatbots, so that a company’s customer service can be even worse than if they just let you interact with their cost-saving human-replacing interactive help system in real time? 

So you have to go do other things between messages, and then check back after whatever time interval the company has made a decision to take from your day for no reason other than to keep a facade that increasingly no one believes. 

And then if you take too long the bots are like “sorry I haven’t heard from you in a while, this session is closed” and you have to go through the entire process again, for exactly zero reason except someone decided to program it that way and someone else said “yes, this is a good idea, we should definitely unleash this dehumanizing frustration machine on our customers”.

When are we gonna make a law that chat bots must be clearly labeled as such, the same way advertisements must be labeled as such? We should have the right to know who's human.

The end now make some scutoids!!!! Good math shapes are the light we need in a world of bots. △

Vi

P.S. It is September 11. I wrote a piece a year ago on how I feel about that. http://vihart.com/never-forget/