6 Wishes Birthday Card | Hexa - Hexa Flexagon | English
Channel: Arvind Gupta
Date: 2015-02-24

This is an great birthday card where you can write six different wishes for your friend and loved ones. They can then keep playing with it and try to find out all the six wishes. The sixth wish is often hard to find making it an interesting game. All this is made with just a strip of paper. Amazingly the paper keeps on flexing and shows six different faces with six triangles each.

It is also called the hexa hexa flexagon. It has six faces and each face is a hexagon. So hexa hexa. It flexes so it is hexa hexa flexagon.

Take an A4 size paper and tear 2 rectangular strips lengthwise. The width of these strips can be the width of the scale. Join both these strips to make a long rectangular strip.

We have to fold equilateral triangles on this strip now. For doping this, at one of the strip fold the corner in three exact equal parts. Now each part is 30 degrees. Leave the first part and with the remaining 2 parts you'll have a 60 degree angle. So fold an equilateral triangle. Keep folding equilateral triangles back to back such that you have exactly 19 of them.

For hexa hexa flexagon you need 6 X 6 = 36 triangles. Since the paper has 2 sides so we will fold 18 triangles. We need one extra as need one triangle to glue over the first one.

Cut of the remaining strip at the end and small part in the beginning. So now you have exactly 19 triangles. Fold the first triangle down and start folding one triangles over the other so that you get a another rectangular strip half the size of the first one (nine triangles wide).

Now you have to follow the instructions like a flat tri-hexa-flexagon.

After 3 triangles fold in under the strip. Then after 2 triangles fold it under again. Now you should see a hexagonal shape. Now take the remaining over the first one and the last 19th triangle come on top. Now take it below and and glue it over the 1st.

Now you can start flexing and start writing your messages. I must warn that the sixth face is hard to find, so don't give up.

Have fun flexing. This work was supported by IUCAA and Tata Trust. This film was made by Ashok Rupner TATA Trust: Education is one of the key focus areas for Tata Trusts, aiming towards enabling access of quality education to the underprivileged population in India. To facilitate quality in teaching and learning of Science education through workshops, capacity building and resource creation, Tata Trusts have been supporting Muktangan Vigyan Shodhika (MVS), IUCAA's Children’s Science Centre, since inception. To know more about other initiatives of Tata Trusts, please visit www.tatatrusts.org