Deflating the Pentagon

In this paper we consider deflations (inverse pocket flips) of n -gons for small n . We show that every pentagon can be deflated after finitely many deflations, and that any infinite deflation sequence of a pentagon results from deflating an induced quadrilateral on four of the vertices. We describe a family of hexagons that deflate infinitely for a specific deflation sequence, yet induce no infinitely deflating quadrilateral. We also review the known understanding of quadrilateral deflation.