The grandson has a set of Magformers:
https://www.magformers.com/gallerymedia
They are plastic squares and triangles with a cylinder magnet on each edge. You stick them together to form things. The cool thing is, there is no wrong way to assemble them. No matter how you twist each connection, it snaps together. It’s like each cylinder has both positive and negative on each end.
How do they do that?
Dennis
I misread magformers in an…unflattering manner.
They’re quadrupoles instead of dipoles. Picture a magnet with north up and south down on the near face of one edge, and another one with south up and north down on the far face.
They are more complex then I thought. Take two squares and lay them on top of each other, they can be placed any direction and they work. Now pull them apart and assemble 4 triangles on top of one square to form a pyramid. Now try to put the 2 squares back together, they attract in some orientations and repel in others. So the top magnets in the assembly affect the poles of the second piece.
Dennis
I have something similar. The magnets are free to roll and will roll to the correct orientation when connecting to another piece. If you have a stack and add one piece to the stack then the magnets will roll on the piece you are adding. If you have two stacks and try to put them together they are not free to roll and may repel depending on their orientation.
There may be more than one way of making these toys. The ones I’m familiar with, the magnets weren’t free to move.