Unexpected twists in geometric dissections (Q2373427)

A geometric dissection of two plane figures \(A\), \(B\) is a cutting of \(A\) (by straight line segments) into a finite number of pieces that can be rearranged to form \(B\). For instance, it is well known that any two polygons of equal area can be dissected in this way. Here the author investigates dissections where the parts are connected to each other by a twist-hinge. This is a point of rotation in the relative interior of the line segment along which two pieces touch edge-to-edge. It allows one piece to be flipped over relative to the other, using 180\(^\circ\) rotation through the third dimension. New techniques are introduced for designing twist-hinged dissections, and these are applied to several pairs of regular polygons or star-polygons not previously known to have twist-hingeable dissections.