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Diary, July 2026



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Wednesday, July 1, 2026

More on convex shapes of hexagons

I continue looking into convex shapes of hexagons and looking into the conjecture that the sequence deviates at most one from the sequence A216522. With respect to this sequence and the sequence A135711 the following are true:

A216522(n) = ceiling(sqrt(12n + 9)) - 3
A135711(n) = 2.ceiling(sqrt(12n - 3))
A135711(n) = 2.A216522(n-1) + 6
A216522(n) = A135711(n+1)/2 - 3
(It is important to note that the sequence A135711 is one based where the sequence A216522 is zero based.) If we take the sequence A216522 as a reference then the perimeter should be defined as the distance between the hexagons on the outside where the distance between the center of two hexagon is defined as one. The table below gives for a given perimeter (for which k is positive) the number of hexagons is can enclose. So for k is one, seven hexagons can be enclosed with a perimeter of six.

perimeter:  sides:                         #triangles:     #hexagons:
6k          k,   k,   k,   k,   k,   k     6k²             3k² + 3k + 1
6k + 1      k+1, k-1, k+1, k,   k,   k     6k² +  2k - 1   3k² + 4k + 1
6k + 2      k+1, k,   k,   k+1, k,   k     6k² +  4k       3k² + 5k + 2
6k + 3      k+1, k  , k+1, k,   k+1, k     6k² +  6k + 1   3k² + 6k + 3
6k + 4      k+1, k+1, k,   k+1, k+1, k     6k² +  8k + 2   3k² + 7k + 4
6k + 5      k,   k+2, k,   k+1, k+1, k+1   6k² + 10k + 3   3k² + 8k + 5
If we use a zero based variant of sequence A216522, the formulea becomes: ceiling(sqrt(12n - 3)) - 3 for the number of perimeters. Lets denote this number with p, then the equations with this formulea are:
p + 3 - 1 < sqrt(12n - 3) ≤ p + 3
(p + 2)² < 12n - 3 ≤ (p + 3)²
p² + 4p + 4 < 12n - 3 ≤ p² + 6p + 9
p² + 4p + 7 < 12n ≤ p² + 6p + 12
Now if we fill in the values for the perimers and matching number of hexagons, we get:
6k:      36k² + 24k +  7 < 36k² + 36k + 12 ≤ 36k² + 36k + 12
6k + 1:  36k² + 36k + 12 < 36k² + 48k + 12 ≤ 36k² + 48k + 19
6k + 2:  36k² + 48k + 19 < 36k² + 60k + 24 ≤ 36k² + 60k + 28
6k + 3:  36k² + 60k + 28 < 36k² + 72k + 36 ≤ 36k² + 72k + 39
6k + 4:  36k² + 72k + 39 < 36k² + 84k + 48 ≤ 36k² + 84k + 52
6k + 5:  36k² + 84k + 52 < 36k² + 96k + 60 ≤ 36k² + 96k + 67
It is quite obvious that for all positive k the above equations are true. This means that for all those minimal perimeter for the given number of hexagons is equal to the given formulea. So, there is not a value, above which the perimeter might be always one larger than given by the formulea. This seems to support the conjecture that it is at most one higher than the value given by the formulea. It should be noted that the number of hexagons for which there is a simple solution for the minimal perimeter appear further and further apart leaving more and more room for complicated cases.

End of heat wave

Today, is the last day of a two week long regional heat wave. In the past two weeks the maximum temperature was at least 25° Celsius. There were eight days on which the temperature was 30° or higher of which one day higher than 35° with a new 37.9° record for the day. There was a total of four days with temperature records for the day of the year. There was also one night that the minimum temperature was 21.6°, which is also rather exceptional. The national heat wave was only eleven days, but nevertheless a record number of days. In the South of the country there was even a 'super heat wave' with four days with temperatures of 35° or higher.


Thursday, July 2, 2025

Graduation Show at Rietveld Academie

I traveled to Amsterdam to attend the Graduation Show 2026 at Gerrit Rietveld Academie. I found the works of the following students noteworthy, which is very subjective and often based on the first impression, in the order I encountered them:

Museums

Afterwards, I went to Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. There I first saw the exhibtion Kho Liang Ie, which contained the following works from his collection: From some of the other exhibtions: I also saw the exhibition Danh Vo - πνεῦμα (Ἔλισσα).

At FOAM, I saw the exhibitions Foam Talent 2026 and Martin Parr - Very Modern and Rather Ugly.


Friday, July 3, 2025

Graduation Show at KABK

Today, I went to the Graduation Show 2026 at KABK. I found the works of the following students noteworthy, which is very subjective and often based on my first impression, in the order I encountered them:

Wildsam Field Guides: Los Angeles

In the train home, I finished reading the booklet Wildsam Field Guides: Los Angeles, which I started reading on March 22 after I bought it on February 18. Initial I read some pages during commercial breaks. In the past days, I finished reading it in the train. Although it has many pages with fun and mundane facts, it also has some serious content giving you a good impression of the city.


Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Flowers again

Just like last year and some years before, our magnolia has some flowers again. The three plants that I planted about a month ago are still doing well. They still rather small, but I understand that that is normal as they focus on growing roots first. I regularly give them water with the waste water from rinsing vegatables.


Saturday, July 11, 2026

Cyber Ægg

In the afternoon, I went to TkkrLab to help with the 'sweatshop' for assembling the Cyber Ægg badge for BornHack. I first unpacked some PCBs, next I helped with attaching the E-Ink display, because that was the bottleneck in the whole assembly line. I did the same in 2017 for the SHA2017 badge. I felt it was a little bit more difficutl this time. I did a bit over thirty before I left.

Exhibitions

I went into the city and at photo gallery Objektief, I saw the exhibition Meesterwerken 2026 with students finishing some the photography training. I saw the presentations by:

At Concordia, I saw the exhibition AKI Finals '26 with works by the following graduates:

I also saw the exhibition Expositie Boswinkel with amateur art from the neighborhood with that same name. I was rather surprised by the quality as the neighborhood is not known as one of the best neighborhoods in Enschede.


Sunday, July 12, 2026

Some interesting relationships

I found some interesting relationships with respect to convex shapes of hexagons. I realized that the each hexagon on a triangluar grid can be viewed as the intersection of two triangles. I also realized that there is a simple relationship with respect to the sizes of the hexagon. Let the sizes of the hexagon, be denoted by a, b, c, d, e, and f, then the following equations are true:
    a + b = d + e
    b + c = e + f
    c + d = f + a
Note that the third equation can be derived from the first two. If n is the sum of all sides, the following equation can be derived:
	d = n - a - 2b - 2c
	e = -n + 2a + 3b + 2c
	f = n - 2a - 2b - c
Now it is also possible to calculate the number of enclosed triangles from the values of a, b, c, and n with the formulea:
     n(4(a + c) + 6b) - n² - 4(a² + c²) - 8b² - 10b(a + c) - 6ac
The formulea shows that a and c can be interchanged, which is what one would expect. This formulea can also be used to find generic formuleas on k of the form 6k² + nk + l, where l is equal to the above formulea for enclosed triangles. I wonder if there is an efficient method to discover for giving values for n and l there is a solution for some values of a, b, and c or not. We could for example, turn the formulea in a quadratic equation of b, which results in (if I am not mistaken):
     -8b² + (6n - 10(a + c))b - n² + 4n(a + c) - 4(a² + c²) - 6ac - l = 0
The determinant of the quadratic equation on b is (if I am not mistaken):
    -28a² - 28c² + (128n - 120)a + (128n - 120)c + 8ac + 4n² - 32l
For there to be a integer solution for b, the determinant must be a square number.

Remark July 13: I was mistaken with respect to last formulea.


Monday, July 13, 2026

I was mistaken

The formulea that I presented yesterday for the determinant (related to convex shapes of hexagons) is incorrect. The correct formulea, written slightly different, is:
    -28(a² + c²) + 8ac + 8n(a + c) + 4n² - 32l
Taking out a factor of four, we get:
    -7(a² + c²) + 2ac + 2n(a + c) + n² - 8l
So, how do we find integer values for a and c for given n and l such that the above formulea returns a square? Even if l is a negative number, there are only a limited number of pairs to be evaluated, due to the negative factor with the quadratic terms. The values for n are always positive. It looks like all positive values are within a certain circle or elipse. The function is symmetric around the line a = b, The highest value probably lays on that line. If we replace a and b we get the formulea:
    -12x² + 4nx + n² - 8l
From the first derivative we know that the highest point is at x = n/6. This might be used to determine the center of the circle. I wrote some code to investigate values for which the formulea returns squares for various values of n and l and discovered that only for some multiples of 3 for n and multiples of -6 for l there are no squares. The others have many squares and it seems that the number increases with smaller values for l.


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