Looking for plastic hex pieces seen in Stephen Hawking's Genius Series

June 8, 2016 7:20 PM

I'm looking where to buy these plastic hexagonal pieces we saw on Steven Hawking's Genius on PBS in the US. In the episode What Are We?, the volunteers use little plastic hexagonal pieces with embedded magnets to form different shapes. They come in around 13:30 in the video link above. Some images here. Anyone know where, if anywhere, to find these?
posted by nightwood to Science & Nature (8 answers total)

Somewhere like here or here maybe?

I would try "educational magnets" or "science fun magnets" or some kind of combo of those words in the Googs.
posted by turbid dahlia at 7:37 PM on June 8, 2016

Best answer: I haven't spotted these before, though I've worked with a lot of similar math toys.

To help with your search, those are actually pentagonal pieces (5 sides). I would guess some sort of bio/life sciences kit because of the bumps, but of course I'm not sure.
posted by ktkt at 8:25 PM on June 8, 2016

Best answer: Try emailing the producers? Iain Riddick & Ben Bowie are Bigger Bang & their company web pages have some contact details here.
posted by pharm at 1:06 AM on June 9, 2016

Those might have been 3D-printed especially for use in the show. The screengrabs aren't sharp enough to make an educated guess, and the show itself is not available in my region.
posted by Harald74 at 1:09 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks for the ideas. Thanks to ktkt for correcting me - that's made my searches a bit better. And thanks to pharm for the production company information. I've emailed them and am waiting for a reply. I've also asked if they were 3D printed, if I could get the model, since I have access to a Makerbot.
posted by nightwood at 8:07 AM on June 9, 2016

Best answer: I found some things that are similar on this user's Thingiverse page.
posted by komara at 2:39 PM on June 9, 2016

Best answer: And thanks to komara who led me down the trail, which finally led me to the models on sale at Science within reach. Which unfortunately are not currently available. They mention that they will have blue and yellow and these look like they are the ones used in the show.

Also NIH has a downloadable plain model. And there is another on thingverse.
posted by nightwood at 5:18 PM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Just as a follow-up: nightwood and I MeMailed back and forth about this model and he was gracious enough to print me some pieces. The magnets themselves are easy to find on eBay. At his request I'm posting some photos of the finished product. Please ignore the rough edges - I used superglue which does that weird off-gassing thing where it leaves a white stain on plastics. Should have thought about that when I picked a glue type.

Anyway, here's one mostly solid and one solid, one broken up into many pieces, and both assembled with a quarter for scale.

I haven't found the right jar in which to shake them together yet but I tested it with a plastic cup and it's surreal how well it works. When partially assembled the pieces are easy to separate but once that last one clicks into place it's far far more tough to get them apart.

Thanks again, nightwood. This was my first experience with having anything custom 3D printed for me, and putting everything together was a lot of fun (even if I did get more superglue on me in one hour than I have in my entire life).
posted by komara at 11:02 AM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]