When most people think of shapes, they imagine a triangle, a rectangle, or maybe even a fancier-sounding rhombus or trapezoid. But to mathematicians, shapes encompass a vast universe of surprising ...

New work on the problem of “scissors congruence” explains when it’s possible to slice up one shape and reassemble it as another. If you have two flat paper shapes and a pair of scissors, can you cut ...

Scientists have developed cube-shaped magnetic building blocks that can be assembled into two-dimensional shapes and controlled by an external magnetic field. They can be used for soft robotics ...