Reading+and+Reflection

Article Review 2  Dan Parkison  Date: 9/29/2010  Call # EDUC699

**Bibliography article cited/** : Robert Lang folds way-new origami | Video on TED.com  viewed 9/24/2010, @http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/robert_lang_folds_way_new_origami.html

media type="custom" key="7051747" align="center"

**Summary of the Article:** What is origami? Most people think they know what origami is. It's this: It's become an art form, a form of sculpture.  The common theme -- what makes it origami -- is folding, is how we create the form. If you look close, it's this shape, called a crane. Every Japanese kid learns how to fold that crane. The secret to productivity in so many fields -- and in origami -- is letting dead people do your work for you.  Origami revolves around crease patterns. The crease pattern shown here is the underlying blueprint for an origami figure. The directions of the folds at any vertex -- the number of mountain folds, the number of valley folds -- always differs by two. Two more or two less. If you look at the angles around the fold, you find that if you number the angles in a circle, all the even-numbered angles add up to a straight line. All of origami comes from that. If we obey these laws, we can do amazing things. So in origami, to obey these laws, we can take simple patterns -- like this repeating pattern of folds, called textures -- and by itself it's nothing. This fish, 400 scales -- again, it is one uncut square, only folding. The most powerful tools in origami have related to how we get parts of creatures. We take an idea, combine it with a square, and you get an origami figure.  What's the most abstract form? It's a stick figure. A flap for every leg. What paper went into that flap? Well, if I unfold it and go back to the crease pattern, you can see that the upper left corner of that shape is the paper that went into the flap. There's other dimensions for flaps. If I make the flaps skinnier, I can use a bit less paper. If I make the flap as skinny as possible, I get to the limit of the minimum amount of paper needed. There's other ways of making flaps. If I put the flap on the edge, it uses a half circle of paper. What do I need? I need a lot of circles.  Because lots of people have studied the problem of packing circles. according to more rules. That gives you the folds. Those folds fold into a base. Those folds fold into a base. You shape the base. You get a folded shape -- in this case, a cockroach. Everything you'll see here, except the car, is origami.  Just to show you, this really was folded paper. Computers made things move, but these were all real folded objects that we made. Surprisingly, origami, and the structures that we've developed in origami, turn out to have applications in medicine, in science, in space, in the body, consumer electronics and more. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000000; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> One of the earliest was this pattern: this folded pattern, studied by Koryo Miura, a Japanese engineer. Now, there is actually a little origami in the James Webb space telescope, but it's very simple. It folds in thirds. It folds in thirds. It's a very simple pattern -- you wouldn't even call that origami. The design called for geosynchronous orbit, 26,000 miles up, 100-meter diameter lens. How do you make a large sheet of glass smaller? Well, about the only way is to fold it up somehow. Now, there is other origami in space. Airbag designers also have the problem of getting flat sheets into a small space. It's the same pattern, called "the water-bomb base."

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**Reaction/Reflection of the Article:** <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I found this video very fascinating! What I thought was particularly interesting was that the art form has been around for centuries. What has changed was the application of math to the process. Robert Lang even went a step further, and created a free program that would all the user to create their own origami figures, based on a stick figure that they draw on the screen.The program can be downloaded for Mac and Windows machines at <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">__http://www.langorigami.com/science/treemaker/treemaker5.php4__

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> One class that I had in college was a History of Math class. One of the topics in the class was problem solving. Two of the steps in problem solving were to draw a picture, and look at a simpler problem. This origami TED video and the Treemaker 5 program above do just that. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> One of the new features is that it will also show the folding pattern for the origami project. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I could see this information being using in teaching 21st Century Skills, because it deals with problem solving techniques, as well as applications to space-age technology using simple math and engineering principals.