On the Hunt for Flexible Polyhedra
Reymond Akpanya, Vanishree Krishna Kirekod, Sascha Stüttgen, Alice C. Niemeyer, and Daniel Robertz

Proceedings of Bridges 2025: Mathematics and the Arts
Pages 487–490
Short Papers

Abstract

A polyhedron in Euclidean 3-space is called infinitesimally flexible if there exist tangent vectors of motions of the vertices that retain edge lengths, but change distances of at least one non-connected pair of vertices. In this paper, we describe a construction of such polyhedra inspired by examining models built from plastic triangles. We illustrate a method to construct polyhedra by gluing strips at their boundaries. Following the presented approach, we provide an example of a polyhedron that is indeed infinitesimally flexible.

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