What is a hexaflexagon? Yes, it is a real thing. At first glance, a hexaflexagon appears to be a simple two-dimensional two-sided hexagon. However, if you know how to fold it the right way, it can be rearranged to reveal a third side hidden within.
How do I create a hexaflexagon? They are actually quite simple. First, you’ll need to start with a strip of paper. Fold it over itself to create a chain of ten equilateral triangles. You’ll know that the triangles are equilateral if they can continue to be folded on top of one another while still staying within the sides of the paper strip.
Then you have to fold it into a hexagon shape as shown below, making sure to have the three openings facing the same way. There also shouldn’t be an opening all the way through the middle of the hexagon.
Once it is folded correctly, either fold and glue the tenth triangle, or cut off the tenth triangle and instead use tape on the seam.
Once you have your hexaflexagon made, you can color it so that once the third side is revealed it is obvious that it is a new side. To reveal the third side, pinch three of the seams inward. Then open the seams along the top. If you can’t find the opening to the third side, try flipping the hexaflexagon over and doing the same process again. Below is a diagram of how to reveal the third side.
The hexaflexagon mentioned above is actually known more specifically as a trihexaflexagon because it has three sides. You can also create hexahexaflexagons, which contain a total of 15 different arrangements, or tetraflexagons which are square shaped and are used to construct many things including the Jacob’s Ladder toy and the magic wallet trick.
If you want to learn more about hexaflexagons, print a template, or watch an instructive video, visit vihart.com/hexaflexagons
As you know, languages have existed pretty much forever. They‘ve obviously changed greatly over time, but one thing about language is consistent throughout the entire world – there are many. There is an estimate of over 6,500 different languages spoken all around the world, thus it’s difficult for everyone in the world to easily communicate. Many countries even have multiple official languages, spoken at a national level by equally large amounts of people. Like in the country of Ethiopia, the languages of Amharic, Tigrinya, Afar, Oromo, Somali, and many others are all spoken on a regular day-to-day basis. And that’s just one country out of over a hundred and ninety.
But what if there was a way we could all communicate using the same means of communication, what if there was a written, and spoken form of communication, that anyone could easily pick up and use? And what if that form of communication was personally tailored to be easily pronounced, and spoken by people of any linguistic background? You’re probably thinking of Esperanto, but no…this isn’t Esperanto, this is better, it’s called Toki Pona! Why is it better? Well, here’s why: According to OxfordDictionaries, Toki Pona was a language created back in 2001, but it wasn’t really used, or even heard of, by a wider population, until in 2014 when Sonja Lang released the book, Toki Pona: The Language of Good. After the book was released, Toki Pona was practiced and spoken on dedicated online chat rooms, and at occasional community meet-ups.
But what even is this language, and why should anybody really care? Well, they should care because Toki Pona is personally crafted to be the easiest, and most realistically potential universal language that could unite the world. And, it’s really easy to learn as the entire language only relies on its 125 root words (and 14 phonemes).
But how does that work? With only 125 words, how would you say…anything? Well, it’s because according to the official book of the language, it’s how you use them. If you were to see a table, you would call it “a table” but what if in your language, there’s an incredibly limited vocabulary, well, then (in Toki Pona’s case) you’d call it a “Four leg wood.” Or, what if you spoke Toki Pona, and ate a hamburger? Hamburger? Don’t you mean “Round meat food?”
Toki Pona is just like that, and it’s surprisingly efficient, as you can add on as many of the root words as you like in order to make the object, or thing you’re describing more efficient. An actual example of this language is the phrase “waso telo” which are the Toki Pona words for “water bird” which means seagull, there’s also “ilo toki” which means “talking tool” which usually refers to a phone. Toki Pona thus heavily relies on context.
Toki Pona also only uses 14 Latin letters which are, “a e i j k l m n o p s t u and w,” but the language also has an official script called Sitelen Pona:
which has a very original design, and somewhat resembles the Ancient Mayan alphabet.
But along with having a Latin alphabet alongside its traditional unique Sitelen Pona, members of the online Toki Pona community have adapted the to Arabic, and Korean script, making it even more easy, and accessible. But for me personally, I think the best way to learn it would be to learn the symbols, because once you learn what those one hundred and twenty five symbols mean, and just get over that hump, that’s it, you’ve learned the entire language, there really aren’t that many rules.
So, anyway, I hope you try and learn about this language, and possibly get a bit closer to us all kind of understanding each other, so goodbye, or in translated Toki Pona: Not hello!
Battle royale games have gained a lot of popularity in the past couple of years. Games such as Fortnite and Pubg have been some of the most played games in the past year. But why are battle royale games so popular?
Battle royale style games are pretty recent. The first iteration, that people consider battle royale, is the “Hunger Games” mini game in Minecraft servers, which was styled after the movie and book series The Hunger Games.
Today, according to digitaltrends.com, battle royale games have 6 defining characteristics:
giant maps for the player to explore
that you start of with nothing
caches and chests from which you get items from
a storm or barrier that forces players to get closer together
the last player or group standing wins the game
something that makes the specific battle royale game unique (or every game would be extremely similar)
Which brings me to the first point on why they are popular, which is their aspect of being unique. Games such as Fortnite are widely played because they are unique. In Fortnites’ case, it’s building system is what makes it unique, and so fun to play, because you don’t have to sit in specific areas for cover, you can build your own.
But uniqueness is not the only reason battle royale games are popular. They are also popular because its system is very easy to apply to many games. Like how recently, they released a game called Tetris 99 which uses an old and very popular popular game, Tetris, and then they made it so you had to play against 98 other people, effectively making a battle royale Tetris game.
But, not only that, battle royale games are also super popular today because many of the biggest battle royale games are free. Games like Fortnite and Apex Legends can now be played by pretty much anyone because people aren’t blocked by a hefty price for the game. So, everyone can try them, and why wouldn’t you, it’s free.
There has been fridge weather in the Midwest, specifically in Minnesota, during the past month. The wind chill temperature in the Midwest has reached around -30. The negative weather began around the week of January 28 and extended through February 1. The arctic cold has resulted in many with no homes to freeze to death in Chicago. According to NBC Chicago, 19 people have died in the blistering cold, many of whom were homeless.
There were closings of hundreds of schools across districts for days across the Midwest. Here in Minnesota, governor Tim Walz is not going to penalize school districts in the state by adding more school days to compensate for the school days lost, the week of January 28, during the fridge below zero temperatures. The cold broke records in many cities and states that week. According to Fox 9 News, it became the lowest temperatures recorded in Minnesota since 1994.
Although the governor of Minnesota decided to not add school days at the end of the school year, I asked some students around how they felt about school days being added. It has been a big topic for quite a while, especially since a few years ago, more school days were added at the end of the school year due to having too many snow days.
Tovi Yangh: Honestly I would rather have schools added at the end of the year if it is needed. I’d rather go to school when it’s warm than suffer in the cold walking to school or having to carry my jacket around because it’s too cold. Other than that, I don’t really mind with whatever that happens. If school days are added then I’ll go since I have to.
Emily St. Clair: I would hate it if school days were added. I don’t want to go to school in the summer especially since we don’t have air conditioner. No one would want to show up and be surrounded by a lot of students when it’s hot.
Vahue Thao: I think that adding days would be unfair because it wasn’t really our fault that we had snow days. Also, I think that kids won’t show up because maybe their families have already made plans for it already.
Dayna Baty: Honestly, it doesn’t really affect me but I think that school days shouldn’t be added no matter how many snow days there are. Personally, I’ve used those snow days to catch up on school work and I think they’re really helpful with just catching up on school.
I also interviewed many others who had the same views. Overall, students want their summer break to start early with no school days added. Many others also have stated that they are thankful that SPPS is doing a better job at calling snow days and early releases than they did a few years back.
Hopefully, next winter will be less dangerous, not just for students, but for everyone else.
Every year, Highland Park Senior High School hosts a musical event called “Scotapalooza.” It took place on January 27th, 2019, which was right before the 4 days off of school. This event featured many different bands that performed. This year, the line-up for music was: both the middle and high school jazz bands, the Highland Tour band, and other small ensembles including a rock band and the “Ben Jossi Combo.”
The event took place at the North Garden Theater, which had plenty of space for the bands and seating for guests.
Scotapalooza also had a wide range of drinks and snacks to attract guests. This included a full bar, and a food station with pretzels and cookies. This part of the event itself helped raise $247 for Highland’s music program.
Overall, Highland raised $4,213 in revenue for Highland’s music program. A lot of it came from donated gift cards, same-day purchased tickets, and from food and beverage sales.
In the past, the money raised has gone to purchasing a new drum set which the band needed for jazz band. This year, the money raised will go towards purchasing new instruments, sheet music, and more needed musical items.
Scotapalooza is a great event that brings everyone at Highland together with multiples genres of student music. It also helps the Highland community by supporting high school music programs.
Valentine’s Day has gone and passed, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a history lesson on it.
It started as a feast to honor saints and to celebrate romance. In the 18th century, it became less of a feast to celebrate saints and more of a day to give the people you loved chocolates, roses, and heart-shaped cards.
In the 19th century, hand-written cards were largely replaced with mass produced Valentine’s cards from companies. People also started giving keys to their valentine to show that they “unlocked their heart,” and they were also given to children to ward off epilepsy. The Orthodox and Lutheran are often the most to celebrate it.
The 1800s was when most companies started selling what we use today to celebrate: boxes of chocolates, roses, and cards with Cupids.
Around 190 million cards are sent in the United States, and that doesn’t include the millions that children in schools hand out to their classmates. It is a HUGE source for money in the country.
There’s also many movies and cartoons based around Valentine’s Day. The TV show Parks and Rec also made their own “Galentine’s Day,” which is a day to celebrate your female friends.
Valentine’s Day isn’t just a day for romance, it’s also meant to celebrate anyone you deem important in your life.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, directed by Peter Ramsey, Robert Persichetti Jr., Rodney Rothman, and Bob Persichetti, was a resounding success. It has made $340.6 million at the box office and has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes (as of this writing), and its success is well deserved.
Into the Spider-Verse centers around Miles Morales, a teen from Brooklyn who is bitten by a spider and gains powers. The movie shows his journey in learning how to become Spider-Man. At the same time, spider people from other dimensions have been thrown into his — and they need to get back home.
The entire movie was amazing to watch. Each character in the movie was fun, with different designs and personalities. The animation was gorgeous, and once the story really got started, it had me hooked. Even though the movie was great, some scenes took it to a whole different level for me. The moment when Miles truly becomes Spider-Man is, in my opinion, the best scene in the entire movie: I could watch it again and again.
This is not to say the movie is perfect. One of the biggest drawbacks for me was all the flashing lights. The trailers weren’t exaggerating the movie’s tendency toward flashing colors and lights, and sometimes it just got too bright.
Another problem for me was that there was so much more about the story and characters that I wanted to see. Looking back now, it feels like some pieces are missing, especially in Gwen’s character arc. From watching the trailers, I figured that Gwen would be one of the main characters, but when I watched the movie, it felt like she took a backseat to Miles and Peter. It feels to me like some of her scenes might have been cut. I think the movie left a lot of opportunities on the table, because the story and characters are so amazing.
All in all, I loved watching this movie: the animation, the story, the humor, the serious moments, the soundtrack, and so on. Everything was amazing! You can tell that a lot of work and talent went into it. I cannot recommend this movie enough.
The 61st annual Grammy’s kicked off on CBS, on February 10th, at 7pm Central Time, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Singer songwriter Alicia Keys hosted the event. In total, 81 awards were given out across 30 genres.
Some of the biggest awards are in the general field which includes: Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. “This is America” by Childish Gambino, aka Donald Glover, won both Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Album of the Year went to Kacey Musgraves for Golden Hour and Dua Lipa won Best New Artist.
There were also several performances during this year’s Grammy’s. There were eighteen performances featuring some of the biggest names in music including: Travis Scott, Alicia Keys, Cardi B, Post Malone, Shawn Mendes, Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Jennifer Lopez.
There were other more memorable wins from the night, such as Drake winning Best Rap Song for “God’s Plan” and Ariana Grande winning Best Pop Album for Sweetener.
There were other important non award moments such as Michelle Obama taking the stage to talk about the importance of music and Drake’s acceptance speech in which he told young artists that award shows like the Grammy’s, that were put on by people who didn’t understand their music, were unimportant.
Another huge moments was Janelle Monae’s performance which highlighted black women.
There was also an In Memoriam segment featuring and remembering artists that passed away this past year. Jahseh Onfroy aka XXXTentacion was controversially not featured because of his history with domestic violence.
The big winners of the night were: Childish Gambino who won four awards for his song “This Is America” and the accompanying music video, and Kacey Musgraves who won four awards this year for Best Album, Best Country Album, Best Country Song and Best Solo Country Performance.
Several people also won Lifetime Achievement Awards such as: Sam and Dave, Black Sabbath, Donny Hathaway, Parliament Funkadelic, Dionne Warwick, Billy Eckstine and Julio Iglesias.
To find more information about this year’s Grammy’s, go to the Grammy’s official website at https://www.grammy.com.
Every winter, the senior class plans a field trip to go snow tubing. This year, it was planned for February 7th, but things didn’t go according to plan.
Seniors showed up on Thursday with all their layers of clothing ready to go. The field trip cancelation was announced to everybody half-way through first hour. Due to a snow storm, SPPS high schools got an early release at 1:30pm. Some people were worried that if the seniors went on the field trip, the road conditions would get bad on the way back and the busses wouldn’t make it back by 1:30pm for students to ride the bus home.
By that time, students had already found out about the cancellation and were very upset. I remember seeing a swarm of upperclassmen around the counseling office during passing time after first hour. Some seniors decided to leave after 1st hour. They were upset because most students didn’t bring their school work because they didn’t think they would need it.
The field trip has been rescheduled for March 14th and everyone seems excited to still be going…given that we don’t have ANOTHER snow storm.
The Official Online Newspaper of the Highland Park Scots
What is a hexaflexagon? Yes, it is a real thing. At first glance, a hexaflexagon appears to be a simple two-dimensional two-sided hexagon. However, if you know how to fold it the right way, it can be rearranged to reveal a third side hidden within.
Plaid Line 