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Engineering with Origami

Hat tip:  Andrew Hans

Origamist "Burglar"?

Origamists make for even nice burglars:

MARLBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Whoever broke into a Massachusetts man’s home last week didn’t take a thing. They did, however, leave the house spotless. 

Nate Roman tells The Boston Globe that when he returned to his Marlborough home from work May 15, he could tell a stranger had been there.
Nothing was missing, but the 44-year-old Roman noticed the beds were made, the rugs vacuumed and the toilets scrubbed. They even crafted origami roses on the toilet paper rolls. 

He called the experience “weird and creepy” and contacted police.
Sgt. Daniel Campbell says that the department hasn’t heard of similar episodes and that there are no suspects. 

Roman says he may have left his back door unlocked. He thinks perhaps a housekeeping service went to his home by mistake.

Breaking Standard Laws of Origami

National Geographic:

A group of researchers led by Andres Arrieta, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, recently published a paper in Science about how earwigs’ wings work. When the team tried to model the unfolding mechanism using a traditional understanding of origami-like folding, it did not compute. The wings simply do not fold like typical well-known materials (think paper) at a single crease.
Instead, Arrieta’s team found that the wings work by possessing spring-like folds, which have two stable configurations. He likens them to slap bracelets, which can stably switch between two different orientations.
Julia Deiters, a researcher at Germany’s University of Duisburg-Essen who recently co-authored a study on the topic, says the wings are also stabilized by folds that are bended, as opposed to straight. These arrange mechanical forces in a way that enables the wings to “lock,” either when they are completely open or folded up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Arrieta and others hope to use their insights into the wings’ mechanisms to create mimics in the future. “The wing gave us the recipe to make similar manmade materials,” he says. Such materials could be an invaluable tool with potential applications for making things like quick-assembly tents, portable solar panels, and compact electronics.

Houston, We Have Paper....

10 years ago...






 Try folding one yourself.

8,000 Chopstick Sleeve tips

Japanese Waiter Exhibits 8,000 Chopstick Sleeves Left as Restaurant “Tips”:

In a culture without tipping, one Japanese waiter began to realize that customers were expressing their gratitude in a subtle (and in some cases even unintentional) way, by folding the sleeves in which their chopsticks came wrapped.

In 2012, Yuki Tatsumi began to collect these into a set he would come to display and call Japanese Tip. He started at the establishment in which he worked, then branched out to other restaurants around Japan to gather over 10,000 examples of all kinds.
Finally, half a decade later, he staged an exhibition of his collection in Tokyo. The variety is remarkable, from complex origami-style works to shredded and otherwise deformed sleeves.

See more


Hat tip:  Helen Sperber

Artificial Muscle

LATimes

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University have developed a variety of origami-inspired artificial muscles that can lift up to a thousand times their own weight — and yet be dexterous enough to grip and raise a delicate flower. 

The devices, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer a new way to give soft robots super-strength, which could be used everywhere from inside our bodies to outer space.

Hat tip:  Joseph Wu Inc.

Ross Symons of Capetown, South Africa

CNN African Voices featured Ross Symons.

7 Origami Inspired Inventions

Mother’s Day after the death of a child

Related to a previous article, The Last Crane, comes this sadness on Mother's Day:

How can I celebrate this day? How can I celebrate myself? Every day I open the door to my daughter’s room, sit on her tidy bed and wonder how any of this is real. How is it possible that all I have left is her collection of albums, stones and crystals, and her closet full of untouched clothes? How long will they serve as proof that she was here on this Earth, that she was real?
As the days go by, my daughter’s proximity to me fades, the reality of her absence becomes more concrete. This would be okay if it were because she had graduated high school, gone off to college and started her life, but that’s not what happened. She stopped existing at 15. She stopped.
I don’t know how to celebrate Mother’s Day without the consolation prize given all mothers — that our babies are gone, but we have laughing toddlers in exchange, that our toddlers are gone, but we have curious, bright-eyed preschoolers in their place, that the messy, carefree days of preschool meld into the primary years, when interests and personalities emerge and blossom, giving us teenagers who are whole, unique people. The fact that our kids grow up into actual people distracts us from the pain of their fading childhood. Except, of course, if they don’t grow up.
I am two mothers now — the mother you see walking beside my remaining daughter in the all-too-real world of chores and homework and trivial things and the mother you don’t see — the mother bereft, imagining that my daughter is two steps behind me, just out of sight.
There are too many mothers like me, rushing here and there, pretending we’re fully in one world when, really, we’re in two.
I look whole and normal, but deep inside there’s an emptiness where my heart used to be. I can’t walk with my surviving daughter without imagining the shadow of her sister right beside us, rolling her eyes, glancing at her phone.
I wish I could go back to when my kids were 9 and 6, when Mother’s Day was about hand-drawn cards and breakfast in bed. I can almost smell the burned toast, taste the mint tea. Dwelling on the past is the only thing that allows me to feel something other than numbness and despair. The others who walk this path of intense grief tell me it gets better. Eventually, I’ll start feeling what I’m supposed to feel. I’ll move more fully into the world of living children. Until then, I’m as much a part of my dead daughter’s world as I am my living daughter’s.

Read the rest at WaPo.

The Peace of Paper in Syria

UN Refugee Agency:

“I find origami indescribably interesting,” says the 26-year-old from Dara’a in southern Syria. “It allows you to make something from nothing, and for me it relieves my stress and releases all the negative energy. It is better than a stress ball.” 

At the start of the Syrian conflict, Fadi, 26, was studying commerce and accounting at Tishreen University in the port city of Lattakia. It was here that one of his professors first introduced him to the ancient art of origami, or paper folding. But what began as a novel hobby back in Syria has since become an important part of his life in the camp. 

Fadi is one of around 80,000 Syrians who currently call the bustling Za’atari camp home. In total, Jordan is host to 658,000 registered Syrian refugees, with the vast majority living in towns and cities across the kingdom. 

Fadi was in his third year of university when the conflict forced him to abandon his studies. As the fighting moved closer to their home in Dara’a, and with his father working abroad, Fadi took the decision to move the family to Jordan in October 2013. 

“I was responsible for 14 souls, mostly women and children,”  says Fadi, referring to himself plus his nine younger siblings, mother, grandparents and his heavily pregnant wife. “I was so scared that one of them would be killed or hurt.” 

They paid smugglers to drive them to the borders of Syria, Jordan and Iraq, where they were dropped off at 5 a.m. and told to walk through the desert towards a distant hill to reach Jordan. But after hours of walking in sweltering temperatures they were surrounded by wilderness, with no food and their water all gone. 

Eventually they met some Bedouin herders who pointed them in the right direction, and they finally reached Jordan after more than 14 hours of walking. Once the Jordanian authorities picked them up, Fadi’s wife, who was seven months pregnant with twins, began to feel pain and was rushed to hospital. 

“Our twins were stillborn,” says Fadi, simply. “After that we went to Za’atari, and life slowly started again.” 

Fadi’s first priority after settling into the camp was to find work to help support his family. Having previously volunteered back in Syria at a centre for children with Down’s syndrome, he got a job as a classroom assistant on an informal education course for children run by NGO Relief International. The courses are held in the camp at a community centre funded by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. 

“It was then that I remembered the origami, and thought it would be something interesting and different to try with the kids,” Fadi says. The results were overwhelmingly positive, according to Fadi, particularly for those children with special needs or behavioural issues. 

“The kids loved the fact that you can turn a piece of paper into something else – a bird, or a chair. It improves their concentration and their commitment. When I give them a project, they don’t get distracted or bored, they go for it until they are finished.” 

“The biggest impact I’ve seen is with Miriam and Mohammed, two kids in the class with Down’s syndrome,” Fadi adds. “They used to have problems with their attention and aggression, but the change has been remarkable. Since they started origami last year they have something to focus their efforts on, and they are much calmer and happier as a result.” 

As well as bringing enjoyment to his pupils, Fadi also credits his hobby with transforming his life in exile. “It has made me feel like an active member of the community here, and now people in the camp know who I am. It’s given me purpose as a refugee.” 

Fadi describes the simple act of folding paper to make other objects as universal, understood by everyone who has ever made a paper plane, regardless of race or language. He dreams of one day teaching origami to refugee children in other parts of the world. “It’s something new, and I’ve seen how they respond to it. Origami breaks down barriers and gives kids hope.”

Also last summer as reported by Jin News Agency:

İZMİR - German Thomas Heinrich Schmöckel is a traveler, who has begun to make origami Peace Birds and hand them in the trees since he saw the racist and discriminatory approach against Syrian refuges in Greek Islands. Thomas writes words on the origami birds such as, "Mercy, Empathy and Love". Thomas wants to raise awareness against the war and discrimination with origami Peace Birds for Syria.  

German Thomas Heinrich Schmöckel is an activist and traveler. Thomas has carried out works for refugees in many countries, including his country. Thomas, who has tried to arouse attention of people by organizing sculpture shows in Germany, has been making origami peace birds to raise awareness for Syrian refugees. "I want to raise people's awareness by hanging them not only Syrian border but also in trees, fences, gates."
Thomas told us the countries he has visited, "First, I began to walk from Germany to Thailand in 2012. Then, I walked to Iran, it lasted three years. I had to stay in Iran for six months for visa issue. After Iran, I worked in Armenia for my project. Meanwhile, I worked in Greek Islands for the refugees. I planned to continue my march after completing my works in Greece; however, I wanted to send my Peace Birds to Syrian from Turkey-Syria border."
Thomas told us why he began to make Peace Birds for Syria, "We met Syrian refugees in Lesbos, one of islands of Greece, and we gave dry clothes and food to the refugees. We built places for refugees to stay. I tried to clean the beach for four months. There wasn't any tourist in Lesbon and people blamed refugees to stop the tourism. They were very angry at them. So, I decided to make origami Peace Birds to calm down the people by writing on them some words such as, "Mercy, Empathy and Love", handing them in the trees. And I began to carry out my project named, "Peace Birds for Syria".  

Thomas said that he wants to raise people's awareness, "Other people also can make their origami Peace Birds and write their peace messages on them. I post a video on my social media account to show how people can make Peace Birds. I hope people in different places support the project."

And a more somber story from 5 years ago:

What chance do paper birds have against tanks and guns and a ruthless determination cling onto power? Not much, of course, but the regime in Syria is apparently so scared of even this sort of symbolic resistance that it must be crushed.  

 by Talib K. Ibrahim - Radio Netherlands Worldwide 

Two Syrian sisters are behind the paper bird protest – to be exact they are origami cranes – and those two sisters have now disappeared. Friends suspect that they have been tortured or worse. The sisters – who used the artist names "Cham and Jasmine" – had been leaving the colourful folded cranes at crossroads and street corners in the Syrian capital Damascus.  

It was an artistic form of civil protest - based on the Japanese legend that whoever folds a thousand cranes will have their wishes come true. The names of people kidnapped by the regime in its fight against the popular revolt were written on the paper birds. 

Disappearance 

 The sisters disappeared themselves on August 5 – Syrian security officials arrived in a car and took them to an unknown destination. Nothing has been heard from them since. Friends fear the worst: 

 “More than 77 days has elapsed since the arrest, which means they exceeded the period at which detainees should be transferred to the court. So why haven't they been transferred yet?”  asks their friend Sami Shukri. From experience the friends and activists say that if detainees are not transferred to the court within this period then their lives are in danger. 

Campaign 

A campaign has now been launched to try and secure the release of the activists. Volunteers are folding cranes with the names of the two sisters on them to demand their release.  

”It’s a campaign based on folding origami cranes named after the two sisters, involving volunteers and groups. The wishes in legends may be a mere "myth", but in reality they carry the wish of Syrian liberation from tyranny, and freedom for all prisoners,” says Sami Shukri.  

Human rights groups estimate that tens of thousands of people have disappeared in Syria – abducted by the army, security forces of pro-government militias. 

The last crane: On parenting a dying child

WaPo:

She took her last dose of chemotherapy the day of that last scan. We paid our last visit to the pediatric oncology clinic.

The “lasts” kept coming — relentless, heartbreaking and agonizingly final.January was the last time she was able to walk upstairs without gasping for breath.February was the last time she had the energy to wake up in the morning and go to school. 

I can’t remember the day she made me the last crane. 

She’d started folding origami cranes when she was about 11. She’d had a liver transplant and her cancer was in remission. She wasn’t allowed back to school because the risk of infection was too great. She’d been drawing a lot, doing projects, and playing with the crafts that so many people had sent her as gifts. She’d gotten some origami paper and a little booklet and folded her first crane. 

She continued making cranes throughout the years, often as a way to thank me for something (e.g., “I’ll make you two cranes if you help me clean my room.”) They’re all over the house — perched on shelves and cabinets, hanging from clear plastic thread above my computer, sitting atop the mantle in our dining room.After her last scan — the “freight train” scan — her oncologist told us her left lung was in danger of collapse and that we’d see obvious symptoms of this soon, likely within weeks. He was right but, still, I wasn’t prepared.She went from going to school three or four days a week to one or two days. She wasn’t able to walk up the path to her classroom, then she couldn’t walk more than a few steps at all without gasping for breath. Her appetite disappeared. She started sleeping more and more. On Feb. 28, she woke up and said, “I don’t think I can go to school right now. Maybe once I’m feeling better …” She never went back.

Read it from beginning to end.


Hat tip:  Joseph Wu

Great Big Story

Toot from Dr. Lang, via Origami-L:

I don’t know if it’s really a great BIG story, but CNN did a nice little story on my folding:


http://www.greatbigstory.com/stories/folded-universe-the-astonishing-beauty-of-origami/


A few errata:


(1) There’s a few errors in their chronology on that page. I’ve sent them corrections. Until then, FAKE NEWS! Sad!


(2) At one point, I seem to be saying I invented an airbag. Which is wrong. (I contributed to an airbag algorithm.) I expect the Senate to investigate.


(3) I borrowed a line from Marty Demaine in BTF at one point. Marty, your royalty check is in the mail.


Other than all that, I hope you like it.

CNN:

The paper tsuru found to be at least a century older

The Asahi Shimbun, via Robert Lang on the Origami-L:

An illustration on a “kozuka” sword accessory has been confirmed as the earliest drawing of origami cranes. (Provided by Yuhiko Nakanishi)

Three origami cranes shown on a samurai sword accessory created around the beginning of the 17th century revealed the classic “orizuru” folding-paper design was invented a century earlier than previously believed.

The accessory, known as “kozuka,” was attached to blade sheaths or used as the hilt for short swords.

Yuhiko Nakanishi, a director of nonprofit group Nihon Token Hozon Kai (Japan sword preservation association), who lives in Tokyo’s Ota Ward, obtained the kozuka from a collector several years ago.

Measuring 1.4 centimeters by 9.7 cm, the kozuka features drawings of three orizuru and a pine tree.

Nakanishi examined the kozuka and found that it was crafted by Goto Eijo (1577-1617), the sixth head of the Goto family that catered to the Ashikaga Shogunate.

Eijo is famed for working for warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598). The carving on the accessory was characteristic of Eijo’s work.

A gold processing method that was no longer used in the Edo Period (1603-1867) was confirmed to have produced the item.

Based on those facts, the kozuka is estimated to have been made between the late Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1568-1600) and the earliest part of the Edo Period.

An orizuru illustration in a design book for dyed goods published around 1700 was previously believed to be the oldest drawing of a paper crane.

Masao Okamura, who studies the history of origami, said the latest finding could help reveal the history of orizuru.

“The posterior half of the depicted orizuru seen from their side was drawn in a wrong way,” said Okamura, who lives in Kunitachi in western Tokyo. “That indicates the illustration was drawn before the method of folding paper (into orizuru) spread widely among people.”

Origami was established during the Muromachi Period (1338-1573) as a method for samurai to show good manners by wrapping their gifts with folded paper.

Traditional “washi” paper of the time was basically rectangular. People could not create origami works without accurately learning how to fold based on the horizontal to vertical ratio of the paper determined by each school of samurai manners.

After the start of the Edo Period, origami became popular in urban areas, particularly among women.

Orizuru was high on the list of preferred origami apparently because it can be created easily with square washi without learning how to fold in detail.

“(The latest finding) indicates orizuru was invented by men in the samurai community as part of their manners,” Okamura said.

You are Loved

This actually turned out to be 1 student who wishes to remain anonymous. These are individually hand written origami hearts that this person started working on back in September. This person has been secretly storing them in their closet at home to surprise everyone today. Source (Original post)

I missed this story:

A student who wanted to remain anonymous took it upon herself to make sure everyone had something on this day dedicated to love. So she started working back in September, carefully folding hundreds of colorful origami hearts -- one for each student. Her hard work became public this morning as each student walked in today to find a heart hanging from their lockers. 

Troy High School principal, Katherine Weaver, said not only did every student get a heart, but the person behind it all wrote a message on each "you are loved." Weaver said the student who created the hearts had help hanging them all up on the lockers after school on Monday. The school posted about the act of kindness on its Facebook page, getting hundreds of shares, likes and comments. Weaver said many students don't use their lockers daily, but today many couldn't wait to get to theirs and find their Valentine.

1300 origami Valentines!

Hat tip:  A Mighty Girl

The Aegis of Origami

Portable shield inspired by origami:

The device, developed by Brigham Young University—a private research university in Utah—is a foldable kevlar shield designed to protect officers in high-risk situations. The foldable shield weighs only a little bit more than a suitcase and is made from 12 layers of bullet-proof kevlar. Its folding design was also inspired by origami.

Despite its low weight, the shield is capable of stopping a .44 Magnum, 9mm, and .355 Magnum, according to reports. We will keep you posted on whether or not departments start implementing this device. 

Going from medieval to state of the art through the ancient art of origami technology:

When mechanical engineering professor Larry Howell began work on a new ballistic shield, police officers told him that their current gear was “kind of medieval.”

“Most of them are still basically just … a big chunk of steel with handles on it, and so they tend to be very heavy,” he tells The Christian Science Monitor in a phone interview. Many of them weigh nearly 100 pounds.

But a new folding kevlar shield, developed by Professor Howell, his colleague Terri Bateman, and other faculty and graduate students at Brigham Young University, weighs 55 pounds, fits in the trunk of a car, unfolds in seconds, and covers more than one officer. It can also take a hit from a .44 Magnum handgun without ripping or tipping over.

Together, these features could make the shield much better-suited to police work than current technology.

“It's easily transportable, and it provides protection for more than one officer,” says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, after watching video of the shield in action. “So I think that if the test results hold up, this could be an important option for police departments to consider.”

The BYU team derived these advantages from an unlikely source. “Origami artists, over the centuries, had discovered interesting ways to achieve motion that we wouldn't have discovered using our traditional engineering approaches,” Howell explains.

His past work has used origami techniques to shrink NASA payloads and medical devices. Through discussions with federal agents and local police, “We realized that having a compact bulletproof barrier that's easy to transport, easy to stow, and then deploys very quickly, and is light, has a lot of benefits.”

“It seems kind of weird that you could go from origami … to something that's bulletproof,” Howell acknowledges. But by applying a Yoshimura fold pattern to a sheet with 12 layers of Kevlar – plus an aluminum core for stability – the researchers created a shield that can withstand hits from 9-millimeter, .357 Magnum, and .44 Magnum pistols.

A federal agent involved in the testing “said that it was revolutionary,” Howell remembers.

Origami Revolution on PBS

Haven't even sat down for time to watch this, yet; but the whole community has been buzzing about it.






According to Seth Friedman through "Google trends", searches are up 46% on origami since the NOVA airing.

4th East Bay Origami Convention

Wesley Guo of Cal Origami at UC Berkeley advertised their annual convention to the O-List, scheduled for November 13th:

This will be the first year since 2013 that the club is hosting theconvention. For that reason, we chose Rebirth and Renewal to be the themeof the event.
For more details about convention, including registration and how to submitdiagrams for our convention book, please visit our website athttps://calorigami.berkeley.edu/eboc.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Visits Increase After President Obama's Visit

U.S. President Barack Obama presents two of his hand-folded origami cranes to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward on May 27. The photograph, provided by the Foreign Ministry, will be displayed at the museum through the end of August.

My third post on the topic (people are going to start assuming I am a fan of the current president):

HIROSHIMA--A photograph of U.S. President Barack Obama and origami cranes he made to mark his historic visit to this city in May went on display June 30 at the atomic bomb museum here.
Museum officials said visitor numbers have soared since the president's visit to the city.
The photo was exhibited at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum after it was provided by the Foreign Ministry at the request of the city government.

Am still curious to know the back story on who helped him fold these.

Hat tip:  The Paper Tree

The Greatest

My apologies to whoever photoshopped this.  I remember it was posted in an album of famous people and origami.  I would love to give credit to whoever credit is owed to, if someone can help point out the way.