84 inch fluorescent tube bulbs (or the modern LED types if you're in to "safety" and "nonhazardous") and then energize them cycling through each plane, or light them all for the world's brightest orthago-chandelier
These two work so well on camera together. Not scripted yet well-spoken banter interspliced with information and food for thought, all while keeping it concise and entertaining!
Oh they missed a thing! Adam was asking about the 3D shape inside, and I was hoping they would circle back around to that, because it's a rhombic dodecahedron! And that's the shape they used for the infinite internal reflect models.
all pencils that make up the side of each hexagon (made of pencils) are in a plane where the rhomb sits. Btw in Buckminsters words, what do you get when you make a 0 volume rhombic dodecahedron ? i.e. bring all the 12 planes to intersect in 1 point, same for the icosahedron, 20 seems even more thrilling, unless there's cancellation from the opposing (already a sufficient descriptor) faces being in the same plane.. this reminds me that there's still no algorithm for extrapolating regular geodesic spheres, or at least there wasn't the last time I looked
"When production evolved from hand-crafted to machine-made, manufacturers began cutting pencils from wood slats. The number of pencils they could produce varied on the shape. “They found by having a hexagonal shape, you could get an extra pencil out of a standard width of slat,” said Berolzheimer." - Somewhere on the internet
My initial response to Matt's question was: "Isn't it obvious? It's so they don't *roll*!" (I wish the stylus I use on my tablet was hexagonal; it's constantly rolling away when I set it down.)
@@cholmalj7194 Yeah, I have that problem too. I think it is because of the art pad designer being in the; "in the future all is smooth, no sharp corners"-gang.
Another thing that comes with hex shape pencils, it feels like you can pack much more than a square pencil, and not roll off tables like a circle pencil.
I will always wish for you to schedule more time with Matt. You have more fun. Your excitement, joy, discovery, etc. is healing. Matt is always a welcome visitor and if you like Maths, has a great couple channels (a sort of behind the scenes to standupmaths, mattparker2). Any time I see people excited about learning and discovery, it brings joy to the heart. Thank you for this, came in some rough times and greatly appreciated.
There are very few things in this world that make me happier than seeing Matt Parker and Adam Savage together. Always love these collaberations between two brilliant men who have done so much to enlighten my life over the past few decades.
Pencils are not cut out from a board in a hexagon shape. The wood is cut into (roughly) trapezoid shapes as halves, grooved, and then assembled. Angled cuts into trapezoids wastes less wood than if you were cutting semicircles
Probably varies by manufacturer, but the How It's Made episode showed them being assembled as a rectangular slab with multiple leads inside. Triangular cutters go over the top, then the bottom, and then you have 10 pencils.
I reckon the tooling for cutting hexagonal pencils is possibly easier to set up while wasting less wood. You already have 2 of the 6 faces on the slab. Each blade removes two more faces up to half way up the slab, while another set of blades on the other side does the same. The cuts meet in the middle, separating hexagonal pencils all in one go. If you were doing the same for square pencils, you'd need a stack of blades with square angles. The kerf of them would be entirely wasted. It's less efficient, harder to maintain, and less robust overall. Circular pencils are the worst. Apart from all the above, they will also roll off the table.
Boss when I was a designer with a problem: "Just do what you did before but leave out the part that didn't work, problem solved." mic drop, walks away pleased with their own genius.
this is the kind of practical math I wish they would have taught me in school. for me having dyscalculia, and also having a very strong visual reasoning, this kind of geometric modeling would have helped so much.
@@eugenio5774 My brain wasn’t at the point where I understood the process enough to give me a dopamine hit when Adam said that. I was still at the stage of “how is this possible?” I think my non mathematical brain was not ever going to get to this level of an ah-ha moment. I do love other people’s joy when they do hit this level of understanding.
@@lauramaeda7214 the thing with geometry is that you won't get it until you do it by yourself. My mathematical brain is itching for me to make one myself.
Gonna second @joaomrtins here, the doing is part of the thinking. The reason you have more trouble "getting it" from just watching the process, is that the process helps you reason about the underlying structure, because you're being forced to engage with it viscerally, on multiple levels of your senses. When it's not just your eyes and your reading comprehension at work, but your sense of touch, your sense of where your body is and the pressure on your fingers, when you're having to deal with the challenges of tension and compression and alignment and you're feeling the underlying forces, when you have to intuit the math on a gut level to achieve the desired result... Your brain CLICKS in a way it just can't by just watching. This is not a super difficult thing to get started with. Got out and get yourself some pencils and rubber bands. Feel it for yourself. You might have a magical moment, and it'll barely cost you anything.
The spaces between the pencils in the dense model are regular octahedrons. On each axis, the space is bounded by 2 pencils. Since there are 4 axis, this results in 8 faces. Each face ends when it encounters a pencil from another axis. There are 3 other axis, so the faces are triangles.
I love Adam's videos because he is such an amazing and geeky builder on top of all his past experiences... but these silly Matt Parker collaborations are what I live for.
Matt first did this 7 years ago. I built one and it sat on my shelf at work for a while. The rubber bands deteriorated pretty quickly. I didn't think to use zip ties, just need to find some long enough. th-cam.com/video/DelH1S32dOg/w-d-xo.html
@28:20 I would put a little clear epoxy with a small paintbrush on everywhere where the pencils butt against each other. Do a few coats over a few days to make sure it's all done then remove the bands.
@@KnuckleHunkybuck It's wild how much of an impact this video had and still has. The phrase is so widly used (in this "corner" of YT) there's probably a lot of people who don't kow where it originated.
This is the third time I've seen Matt build one of these. Good job on the minimum points of tension to constrain the build it was the best part of the three viewings.
Pencils are made in halves, so you just have to cut a big sheet alternating between two angled cuts to get your half-a-gons with no waste beyond the kerf.
Matt and Adam are such a delightful combination of presenters, one with a deep cerebral understanding of geometry and the other with a deep practical understanding of geometry - looking forward to the other videos
When you started playing with the minimum number of bands needed to hold tension, I realized I want to see a collab with Grady from Practical Engineering!
There's something about 60 and 120 degree angles that is just inherently pleasing. I wonder if it's the same part of the brain that makes the "rule of 3" in writing a thing. Even cubes are more visually interesting when you look at them as their hexagon silhouette.
As a fan of both of your channels, I must say I loved this collaboration. Adam enjoyed the process of making a hexastic as much as I and my class did. After watching Matt's video from several years ago, I had my AP Calculus class build these when most of the class was gone on a senior trip for several years. I still keep mine on a file cabinet as a sculpture (and yes I have to replace the rubber bands every so often).
So Pencils became hexagons for three reasons. Practicality, Comfort, and Manufacturing For practicality pencils used to sometimes be round, but it was a common complaint that they would roll off any writing desk with a slight incline. They needed a flattened side to say put. They also were to be uniform, so they didn't have a specific angle to be held. A lot of artist pencils and colored pencils are made the same way, but get round profiles instead because 🤷♂ For comfort the round was superior, and a square ended up with too much of a pressure point on the finger. So 6 seemed the best compromise between cutting heads versus comfort. For manufacturing it is about the amount of cutting blades used. Step 1: The pencils are made by taking large wood rectangles and a multi head router carves the graphite channel down each center. Usually these blanks are about 6-inches to 12-inches in width and vary in length based on the manufacturer and supplier. Graphite cores of the same length are dropped by machine into the channels and wood glue applied. An identical rectangular half is placed on top in an inverted arrangement. The long rectangular sheets are then stacked and placed in a press for curing. Step 2: The pencils run through a multiblade slitter (looks like a table saw with multiple blades), and the two small edge bands on either side are disposed of. You now have really multi foot long square pencil sticks. The Track that they ride in is then a V groove where gravity makes them fall and rotate them 60 degrees. They then pass through another slitter. Then they pass through another v-groove channel that rotates them 120 degrees, and get cut again. These three cuts form a hexagon shape (more sides would require more machines and more steps and more blades to maintain). Some places use something more like a router table instead of creating straight slices, they use a two custom cutter blade profiles (fewer steps but more specialized machined blades). Step 3: the pencils run through finishing. Paint, stamped with writing. Step 4: when dry they are cut to length and an eraser crimped on the end, and they directly go into a counting/boxing machine. So really the Hexagon is the best balance between all three demands.
I love the way Matt kicks into teacher mode, you can hear a change in tone. You can really hear how he absolutely loves sharing his passion for mathematics
I think the best thing about working with Adam would be that even though he is infinitely more talented and skilled than me, he is still goofy, clumsy and humble. The joy of discovering the rules and organization of the universe.
There's some seriously potent math teacher energy in this one. And I can tell Matt was a really good one, by the way he leads to conclusions without just giving them away!
The thumb and two fore-fingers naturally make a triangluar shape when holding a pencil, and a triangular pencil is really comfortable to use. However there are problems: there's not much meat to it making it fragile, there's no axis of symetry through the centre (pencils are made in two halves and glued together) and sharpening one is a *really bad* interrupted cut. A hexagon is a good engineering solution: it's still fairly comfortable (fits into the almost equilateral space between the fingers), it's stronger (there's more wood between the lead an the nearest face), it has the required symetry to glue up, and it's easier to sharpen.
I’ve bought triangular pencils for my kids. It’s supposed to encourage proper pencil grip. I can’t remember how durable they were compared to regular pencils. My kids are pretty hard on stuff anyway.
Would be an awesome pencils holder. Build the dense model out to 5/side hex. Then take pencils out the middle as you need them. When you get low, buy more pencils and fill it back up to a dense model.
I was just waiting for Adam to grab some epoxy to get a mold of the interior shape of this geometry. Matt Parker and Adam Savage. Best mash up ever! My two brothers from other mothers! Love it!
You can make cube from matches, no rubber bands needed. It will hold by friction. I made multiple from standard and large matches. Really meditative work.
My thought on “why hexagons” is is for general use you want something between a square and a circle and a hexagon combines the two optimally given the constraints of the real world. As mentioned above, you should get more pencils per volume of wood because you have to consider the excess wood included in the square pencil. At scale I believe this would exceed the unused wood lost when cutting hexagonal blanks. This would presumably also mean you would be shipping more “wood per lead” when you shipped them out and that would also be inefficient. Also a hexagon is just about right in terms of providing indexing and grip when you are holding it. Other shapes are fine, but a hexagon seems to me to be pretty much in the sweet spot. I think a similar consideration is keeping it from rolling, where a hexagon is about as far towards round you can go before it starts to roll too easily.
I've sent this video to my mechanical engineering teachers cause this is a wonderful demonstration of static equilibrium and the distributive load. Plus you can visually see the represented axes for the math formulae and there's the idea of "how can I make this with less and for cheaper" to think about. This is a GREAT visual aid for equal and opposite forces.
Use wire to hold them together more permanently, then use a pair of safety wire pliers to cinch them tight... I'm sure someone on youtube did a video about those pliers once...
Love the content, making these geometric structures. It would be interesting if once they are created with pencils without erasers, the structure could be stabilized without the rubber bands (spot glue the pencils) the pot the structure in clear resin. After that turn the potted structure to create a sphere with the structure centered in the middle. That would be so much work, but what a display it would make…
Some of the first pencils were just a square of graphite wrapped in parchment. then they made flats of graphite between flats of wood much like carpenter pencils are today (because they won't roll off the roof), and for a while they did do square pencils but they can be uncomfortable to hold so they evolved to hexagons, which were also more efficient for cutting slates from the wood.
I love these Matt Parker videos because of those sudden moments you get when Adam spots the pattern or the mathmatical principal and goes "aaaaah" It'd be good to get Steve Mold, who appears with Matt as part of the Festival of the Spoken Nerd to the cave, as he builds things in order to illustrate scientific principals
I love how in the initial model building, Matt is quickly catching up to Adam. But then once he's learned it these incredible motor skills take over and Adam just starts rapidly pulling away.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 86 | คู่เอก "คมเพชร vs ชาติพยัคฆ์"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/m3q_dRYDuU8/mqdefault.jpg)
Find Matt's new book, Love Triangle, here: amzn.to/3WWMfEZ
Watch more of Matt's videos at Stand-Up Maths: th-cam.com/users/standupmaths
❤ now 3D print it .😊😊
Glass rods/tubes?
Also I'd like to see the hexagons extended on 2 opposite faces until they form intersecting rhomboids. What would the final faceted shape be?
monofilament fishing line to hold it.
Find the solution to start at one pencil, and wrap around them all in one continuous segment.
❤
I give it 6 months before Adam is making giant pencils to make giant shapes
I was thinking a small metal sculpture actually
Glass rods?
I give him 6 days xD
84 inch fluorescent tube bulbs (or the modern LED types if you're in to "safety" and "nonhazardous") and then energize them cycling through each plane, or light them all for the world's brightest orthago-chandelier
I was thinking either metal, or some clear material, on a large scale.
These two work so well on camera together. Not scripted yet well-spoken banter interspliced with information and food for thought, all while keeping it concise and entertaining!
Between these two, or when Adam Savage made the Kendama for Michael from Vsauce.
Seeing Adam go "wahhhh" mind blown from the napkin ring paradox
I love the natural overlap of interest between Adam's engineering mind and Matt's mathematics mind.
Oh they missed a thing! Adam was asking about the 3D shape inside, and I was hoping they would circle back around to that, because it's a rhombic dodecahedron! And that's the shape they used for the infinite internal reflect models.
all pencils that make up the side of each hexagon (made of pencils) are in a plane where the rhomb sits. Btw in Buckminsters words, what do you get when you make a 0 volume rhombic dodecahedron ? i.e. bring all the 12 planes to intersect in 1 point, same for the icosahedron, 20 seems even more thrilling, unless there's cancellation from the opposing (already a sufficient descriptor) faces being in the same plane.. this reminds me that there's still no algorithm for extrapolating regular geodesic spheres, or at least there wasn't the last time I looked
I was waiting for that moment too!
"When production evolved from hand-crafted to machine-made, manufacturers began cutting pencils from wood slats. The number of pencils they could produce varied on the shape. “They found by having a hexagonal shape, you could get an extra pencil out of a standard width of slat,” said Berolzheimer." - Somewhere on the internet
Goat
My initial response to Matt's question was: "Isn't it obvious? It's so they don't *roll*!" (I wish the stylus I use on my tablet was hexagonal; it's constantly rolling away when I set it down.)
@@cholmalj7194 Yeah, I have that problem too. I think it is because of the art pad designer being in the; "in the future all is smooth, no sharp corners"-gang.
Another thing that comes with hex shape pencils, it feels like you can pack much more than a square pencil, and not roll off tables like a circle pencil.
Hexagons are Bestagons 😎
You can tell Adam’s a pro by how often his model is perfectly aligned with the camera
The camera person probably has some input on that as well.
He was a pro before, but he perfected his craft during the pandemic.
I think the cinematographer might have something to do with that.
If I ever need to get sensitive data from Matt, I'm locking him in a room with 71 pencils
As a mathematician, surely he would carry a spare pencil himself.
@@daanwilmer Hmmm, that's true.
@@daanwilmer Pencil suppository.
he will be missing 5 then. it's 76 (4x19)
and then again, you end up with 18 each side, so 72 is correct
Matt: "Obvious not in the everyday sense but obvious in the mathematical sense."
Adam: "Sure."
I will always wish for you to schedule more time with Matt. You have more fun. Your excitement, joy, discovery, etc. is healing. Matt is always a welcome visitor and if you like Maths, has a great couple channels (a sort of behind the scenes to standupmaths, mattparker2).
Any time I see people excited about learning and discovery, it brings joy to the heart. Thank you for this, came in some rough times and greatly appreciated.
One more video with Matt to come!
There are very few things in this world that make me happier than seeing Matt Parker and Adam Savage together. Always love these collaberations between two brilliant men who have done so much to enlighten my life over the past few decades.
Pencils are not cut out from a board in a hexagon shape. The wood is cut into (roughly) trapezoid shapes as halves, grooved, and then assembled. Angled cuts into trapezoids wastes less wood than if you were cutting semicircles
Probably varies by manufacturer, but the How It's Made episode showed them being assembled as a rectangular slab with multiple leads inside. Triangular cutters go over the top, then the bottom, and then you have 10 pencils.
I reckon the tooling for cutting hexagonal pencils is possibly easier to set up while wasting less wood. You already have 2 of the 6 faces on the slab. Each blade removes two more faces up to half way up the slab, while another set of blades on the other side does the same. The cuts meet in the middle, separating hexagonal pencils all in one go.
If you were doing the same for square pencils, you'd need a stack of blades with square angles. The kerf of them would be entirely wasted. It's less efficient, harder to maintain, and less robust overall.
Circular pencils are the worst. Apart from all the above, they will also roll off the table.
Why not cut them into squares?
@@johnmurcott1273 also because you hold them most comfortably with 2 fingers and a thumb.....
This is the most technically boring, yet fascinating thing I've read today.
10:06 that’s the most mathematically sound thing I’ve ever heard: “listen to the pencils”
“Start building it, and keep building it, and then you’re done.” An explanation Anne Elk would be proud of.
step three: draw the rest of the fucking owl
The only way to learn is by playing, the only way to win is by learning and the only way to begin is by beginning - Sam Reich
Boss when I was a designer with a problem:
"Just do what you did before but leave out the part that didn't work, problem solved." mic drop, walks away pleased with their own genius.
this is the kind of practical math I wish they would have taught me in school. for me having dyscalculia, and also having a very strong visual reasoning, this kind of geometric modeling would have helped so much.
Agree 💯% also have dyscalculia.
Oh ffs…
Love when Adam says “this feels so good in my brain” because my non mathematical brain is still processing how all of this structure is possible.
but that sentence does make a lot of sense, doesn't it? when something feels good in the brain, and you feel that pleasant tickle that just... yes
@@eugenio5774 My brain wasn’t at the point where I understood the process enough to give me a dopamine hit when Adam said that. I was still at the stage of “how is this possible?” I think my non mathematical brain was not ever going to get to this level of an ah-ha moment. I do love other people’s joy when they do hit this level of understanding.
Geometry and Trigonometry are way more fun than most people think.
@@lauramaeda7214 the thing with geometry is that you won't get it until you do it by yourself. My mathematical brain is itching for me to make one myself.
Gonna second @joaomrtins here, the doing is part of the thinking. The reason you have more trouble "getting it" from just watching the process, is that the process helps you reason about the underlying structure, because you're being forced to engage with it viscerally, on multiple levels of your senses.
When it's not just your eyes and your reading comprehension at work, but your sense of touch, your sense of where your body is and the pressure on your fingers, when you're having to deal with the challenges of tension and compression and alignment and you're feeling the underlying forces, when you have to intuit the math on a gut level to achieve the desired result... Your brain CLICKS in a way it just can't by just watching.
This is not a super difficult thing to get started with. Got out and get yourself some pencils and rubber bands. Feel it for yourself. You might have a magical moment, and it'll barely cost you anything.
4:18 "I really appreciate your commitment to Sparkle Motion on this one." Nice _Donnie Darko_ reference!
Ikr? I was just sitting here grinning like an idiot with that. 😊
IKR!
Adams joy at 14:09 is one of those many little "ah-ha"moments we all just absolutely live for.
The spaces between the pencils in the dense model are regular octahedrons. On each axis, the space is bounded by 2 pencils. Since there are 4 axis, this results in 8 faces. Each face ends when it encounters a pencil from another axis. There are 3 other axis, so the faces are triangles.
Just the noise of the pencils sliding against each other as you slot them in and out and building it bigger and bigger sounds really nice lol
Would be cool to glue it together, only to saw one in half to see in the middle
Then you would need to build two, so you could saw through one and keep the other intact. 🤔
See the saw, Saw to see, Saucy
Put the structure in resin. That'd make cutting easier.
Love seeing Matt visit Tested!
Us too!
I love you when Adam and Matt get together.
We love it too.
"Honey... How many pencils do we have?"
-96 because this structure cannot be used
I love Adam's videos because he is such an amazing and geeky builder on top of all his past experiences... but these silly Matt Parker collaborations are what I live for.
Saw it was a hexastix in the thumbnail and immediately knew Matt Parker would be in it.
Matt Parker is in the thumbnail that I see.
@@mf-- I have a different thumbnail. Mine showed the two hexastix on the table.
Hahah same even though Matt wasn't in the thumbnail I saw either!
Is there a Trey Stone? 🤔
Matt first did this 7 years ago. I built one and it sat on my shelf at work for a while. The rubber bands deteriorated pretty quickly. I didn't think to use zip ties, just need to find some long enough. th-cam.com/video/DelH1S32dOg/w-d-xo.html
Joint merch possibility there. "The journey is fiddly, but the result is satisfying." It really does work for both of your channels.
19:44 "it's pencils all the way down" - I don't know why but that is so funny lol
I always love Matt Parker videos. His Stand-Up Maths is great, as is his comedy special, etc.
@28:20 I would put a little clear epoxy with a small paintbrush on everywhere where the pencils butt against each other. Do a few coats over a few days to make sure it's all done then remove the bands.
They both seem like they would be excellent teachers. We need more people like them who make everything so fun and interesting
Matt used to be a teacher. In a way, he still is.
Why is the sound so satisfying? Visually stunning as well.
Fun fact: roofers and some carpenders use square pencils because they will not roll (too far) away if you drop them. 😊
Also, flat pencils.
always an absolute freakin pleasure to have Adam and Matt team up. I am very much looking forward to the next build!
Hexagons truly are the bestagons
Better than all the restagons. Vihart fan?
@@KnuckleHunkybuck I might be mistaken, but I think it started with "Hexagons are the Bestagons" by CPG Grey here on YT.
@@RedSunT Oh, I'm the one who's mistaken. You're absolutely right. Now that you say it, I can hear it in his voice in my head.
@@KnuckleHunkybuck It's wild how much of an impact this video had and still has.
The phrase is so widly used (in this "corner" of YT) there's probably a lot of people who don't kow where it originated.
I legit thought it was started by Vi Hart
As I sit and watch this video, Alexa notifies me that a package has arrived...Matt Parker's Love Triangle is here!
The crossover I wasn’t expecting and nobody knew we absolutely needed!
This is the third time I've seen Matt build one of these. Good job on the minimum points of tension to constrain the build it was the best part of the three viewings.
Matt's back! 🥳
Always love seeing him collab with other people who love all things math & geometry!
watching this with a big smile on my face as I look over at the one I made a few years ago after watching Matt make one in some hotel room.
Adam and Matt have a great energy together, similar to Adam and Michael from VSauce!
14:08 I always love it when Adam has an epiphany. It is so vicariously satisfying.
Pencils are made in halves, so you just have to cut a big sheet alternating between two angled cuts to get your half-a-gons with no waste beyond the kerf.
I love watching how excited Adam gets about Maths when he gets together with Matt!
Matt and Adam are such a delightful combination of presenters, one with a deep cerebral understanding of geometry and the other with a deep practical understanding of geometry - looking forward to the other videos
Always love when Adam and Matt collaborate. They occupy such different niches, but somehow the crossover is always wonderful.
You can just tell when it’s going to be a Matt Parker video just from the thumbnail. I love this.
If M.C. Escher knew about this, imagine the works of art he would have done based on it.
He'd have to pencil it in
@@black_rabbit_0f_inle805😂
Thanks for the video! Simply enjoying these Savage-Parker collaborations. 🙃
What fun. Enjoy watching others challenge you as well as the challenges you set for yourself. Hugs and look forward to seeing more of you two. 💙🌻💙
When you started playing with the minimum number of bands needed to hold tension, I realized I want to see a collab with Grady from Practical Engineering!
There's something about 60 and 120 degree angles that is just inherently pleasing. I wonder if it's the same part of the brain that makes the "rule of 3" in writing a thing.
Even cubes are more visually interesting when you look at them as their hexagon silhouette.
As a fan of both of your channels, I must say I loved this collaboration. Adam enjoyed the process of making a hexastic as much as I and my class did. After watching Matt's video from several years ago, I had my AP Calculus class build these when most of the class was gone on a senior trip for several years. I still keep mine on a file cabinet as a sculpture (and yes I have to replace the rubber bands every so often).
I love how the structure self holds tension on itself with only minimal support.
I love seeing how you two work together! the excitement and joy is contagious (i may have just ordered 100 pencils to build my own! )
These videos are full of so much pure joy!
2:10 I really appreciate that
So Pencils became hexagons for three reasons. Practicality, Comfort, and Manufacturing
For practicality pencils used to sometimes be round, but it was a common complaint that they would roll off any writing desk with a slight incline. They needed a flattened side to say put. They also were to be uniform, so they didn't have a specific angle to be held. A lot of artist pencils and colored pencils are made the same way, but get round profiles instead because 🤷♂
For comfort the round was superior, and a square ended up with too much of a pressure point on the finger. So 6 seemed the best compromise between cutting heads versus comfort.
For manufacturing it is about the amount of cutting blades used.
Step 1: The pencils are made by taking large wood rectangles and a multi head router carves the graphite channel down each center. Usually these blanks are about 6-inches to 12-inches in width and vary in length based on the manufacturer and supplier. Graphite cores of the same length are dropped by machine into the channels and wood glue applied. An identical rectangular half is placed on top in an inverted arrangement. The long rectangular sheets are then stacked and placed in a press for curing.
Step 2: The pencils run through a multiblade slitter (looks like a table saw with multiple blades), and the two small edge bands on either side are disposed of. You now have really multi foot long square pencil sticks. The Track that they ride in is then a V groove where gravity makes them fall and rotate them 60 degrees. They then pass through another slitter. Then they pass through another v-groove channel that rotates them 120 degrees, and get cut again. These three cuts form a hexagon shape (more sides would require more machines and more steps and more blades to maintain). Some places use something more like a router table instead of creating straight slices, they use a two custom cutter blade profiles (fewer steps but more specialized machined blades).
Step 3: the pencils run through finishing. Paint, stamped with writing.
Step 4: when dry they are cut to length and an eraser crimped on the end, and they directly go into a counting/boxing machine.
So really the Hexagon is the best balance between all three demands.
I love the way Matt kicks into teacher mode, you can hear a change in tone. You can really hear how he absolutely loves sharing his passion for mathematics
I think the best thing about working with Adam would be that even though he is infinitely more talented and skilled than me, he is still goofy, clumsy and humble.
The joy of discovering the rules and organization of the universe.
Always enjoy an Adam Matt colab!!!
14:11 and 14:15 That "Laugh of Discovery"... it never gets old! I was laughing with you, Adam! Discovering that 4th axis was a joy!
Silly little Donnie Darko reference in there. Great video! Thanks!
One of my favorite movie quotes of all time and the second Adam said it I hit the comments to see if anyone else caught it.
@@aiboffin295 Saaaaaaame
Man Mr Savage is such a pro, so quick with the building. Love the crossover episode as well!
Ahh, the joy of discovery! ✏✏✏✏✏✏ Love you both, great fun when you are together.
i’ve GOT to try this
You could argue this is just a video about two guys playing with pencils. And I'm here for it :D
There's some seriously potent math teacher energy in this one. And I can tell Matt was a really good one, by the way he leads to conclusions without just giving them away!
The thumb and two fore-fingers naturally make a triangluar shape when holding a pencil, and a triangular pencil is really comfortable to use. However there are problems: there's not much meat to it making it fragile, there's no axis of symetry through the centre (pencils are made in two halves and glued together) and sharpening one is a *really bad* interrupted cut. A hexagon is a good engineering solution: it's still fairly comfortable (fits into the almost equilateral space between the fingers), it's stronger (there's more wood between the lead an the nearest face), it has the required symetry to glue up, and it's easier to sharpen.
I’ve bought triangular pencils for my kids. It’s supposed to encourage proper pencil grip. I can’t remember how durable they were compared to regular pencils. My kids are pretty hard on stuff anyway.
long time fan of both of you! your collabs are top tier youtube content! :)
Guess I’m grabbing a bunch of pencils on my next store run
Would be an awesome pencils holder. Build the dense model out to 5/side hex. Then take pencils out the middle as you need them. When you get low, buy more pencils and fill it back up to a dense model.
that was amazing, would love to see more of these, good mental exercise which is good for the brain.
I was just waiting for Adam to grab some epoxy to get a mold of the interior shape of this geometry.
Matt Parker and Adam Savage. Best mash up ever! My two brothers from other mothers! Love it!
"It's not a lack of prep, it's modelling good learning exploration." 😂 This is basically my approach to all teaching! ❤
Imagine going to the office supply closet and finding this! :D
You can make cube from matches, no rubber bands needed. It will hold by friction. I made multiple from standard and large matches. Really meditative work.
I agree with the directions. I built one years after seeing Matts first video, and the pattern just tells you what the next step is😊
This was super satisfying to watch, I can only imagine how good it must feel to actually build it
"Listen to the pencils" - new merch idea? Seriously though, love it when these two get together.
Lots of fun to watch. Thanks guys.
I wish I could see the beauty of math and geometry the way these guys do.
Adam, please, for the love of god, pour resin over your model, vacuume chamber it, and run it on a lathe into a sphere of the core!
Thank you! Exact same thought I need to cut it in half 😅
Always love a collaboration between the two of you!
My thought on “why hexagons” is is for general use you want something between a square and a circle and a hexagon combines the two optimally given the constraints of the real world.
As mentioned above, you should get more pencils per volume of wood because you have to consider the excess wood included in the square pencil. At scale I believe this would exceed the unused wood lost when cutting hexagonal blanks. This would presumably also mean you would be shipping more “wood per lead” when you shipped them out and that would also be inefficient.
Also a hexagon is just about right in terms of providing indexing and grip when you are holding it. Other shapes are fine, but a hexagon seems to me to be pretty much in the sweet spot. I think a similar consideration is keeping it from rolling, where a hexagon is about as far towards round you can go before it starts to roll too easily.
I've sent this video to my mechanical engineering teachers cause this is a wonderful demonstration of static equilibrium and the distributive load. Plus you can visually see the represented axes for the math formulae and there's the idea of "how can I make this with less and for cheaper" to think about.
This is a GREAT visual aid for equal and opposite forces.
Use wire to hold them together more permanently, then use a pair of safety wire pliers to cinch them tight... I'm sure someone on youtube did a video about those pliers once...
String instead of elastic bands, woven around each pencil.
what? an adam savage matt parker crossover? Once again, the internet provides what i didn't even know i was missing!
Oh Adam and Matt Parker is soo darn good, Every single time!
I haven't watched video yet. Just happy to see Matt on here. Thanks. Carry on.
Always nice to see Matt and Adam together.
I always enjoy y'all's collabs! 😊
Love the content, making these geometric structures. It would be interesting if once they are created with pencils without erasers, the structure could be stabilized without the rubber bands (spot glue the pencils) the pot the structure in clear resin. After that turn the potted structure to create a sphere with the structure centered in the middle. That would be so much work, but what a display it would make…
Some of the first pencils were just a square of graphite wrapped in parchment. then they made flats of graphite between flats of wood much like carpenter pencils are today (because they won't roll off the roof), and for a while they did do square pencils but they can be uncomfortable to hold so they evolved to hexagons, which were also more efficient for cutting slates from the wood.
I love these Matt Parker videos because of those sudden moments you get when Adam spots the pattern or the mathmatical principal and goes "aaaaah"
It'd be good to get Steve Mold, who appears with Matt as part of the Festival of the Spoken Nerd to the cave, as he builds things in order to illustrate scientific principals
i could watch these two for hours and i would not get boring
"I appreciate your commitment to sparklemotion" 😂 I love Adam! Just randomly throwing in a Donnie Darko quote
Matt is absolutely a man after my own heart for using RGB and CMYK as the color schemes. That’s so unreasonably satisfying for my brain.
Plugging the book! Bingo!
I love how in the initial model building, Matt is quickly catching up to Adam. But then once he's learned it these incredible motor skills take over and Adam just starts rapidly pulling away.