The Epcot Ball!

Preliminary instructions:
As I said, these models are all made up of a number of absolutely
identical paper pieces. (The word "origami" therefore applies very
tenously, you see; it's more of a mechanical process.) Therefore,
making a model involves three steps: choosing which model you
want to make, constructing and folding the appropriate number of
pieces, and then assembling them according to a pattern. No step is
hard; they just take some time. I've gotten it down to the point
where I can fold one piece in about one minute; assembly into a
model takes a couple of hours at most for the most complex model
and mere minutes for the simpler models. First I will detail how to
make a single piece (step-by-step) and then I will outline how to
assemble them into a model of a polyhedron.


Paper type and paper size:
Unlike for the fighter jet paper airplane, I strongly recommend that
you use lined filler paper for these models. (I prefer college rule,
but of course that doesn't matter). Typing paper or printer paper,
while appropriate for airplanes, is too thick and stiff for these
models. (However, read below for cases when typing paper is
appropriate.) Each piece starts its life as a small square of
paper. The size of the square determines the eventual size of the
polyhedron model (and the model's physical strength, and how easy
the model is to assemble, and how easy the pieces are to assemble,
and so forth). For average models, I absolutely recommend
using squares that have edges of 1.5 inch. Larger sizes, such as
2-inch squares, may be appropriate for models that you wish to
make larger. Too large squares (3-inch and above) may lead to
flimsy models unless you use stiff paper, such as typing paper. (I
have indeed dreamed of making an Epcot ball out of posterboards,
but it would require a LOT of posterboards.) And of course, the
larger the square, the more sheets of paper you'll have to consume
to make the squares. Smaller squares, such as 1-inch squares, are
ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE to work with and would only be appropriate
if you want to show off how cool you are. (And assembling an Epcot
ball out of 1-inchers would be absolute torture). The 1.5 inch size
allows for sturdy, quick construction and does not penalize
inaccuracies too much.


Accuracy issues and making the squares:
Basically, all the rules that apply to my paper airplane instructions
apply here. All folds should be absolutely accurate and creased
sharp; all measurements must be absolutely accurate and all cuts
must be absolutely accurate. If you make a small error, the pieces
will not be too adversely affected, but remember that you are
making a large number of (supposedly) absolutely identical
pieces. If you are inaccurate in your folding, cutting, or measuring,
the pieces will be irregular and will not fit together nicely. (1-inch
pieces demand absolute perfection, in contrast.) You may find that
you have to discard irregular pieces. When you make a model (you
aren't, yet, because you don't know how which models are possible;
let's concentrate on making a single piece first), you'll gather a
large number of sheets of paper and draw very precise grids (using,
say, a mechanical pencil or something) which divide the paper into
1.5" square regions. Then you'll take sharp scissors and cut exactly
on the lines, producing X number of squares (where X is the number
of pieces you'll need). Then you'll go through and fold X pieces
(repetitively), and finally assemble the model. And
remember: accuracy is everything! Now, on to how to fold a
piece.


Folding a single piece:
(The convention here is different from my paper airplane page: solid
lines mark valley folds, and no mountain folds are involved
anywhere. It will be obvious; don't worry. Also, do not label your
square in any manner while folding it. The only time a pencil is
needed is when dividing up a sheet of paper into squares to be cut.
All folds can be made without any markings; my markings are to
make my instructions clear.) Also, when I refer to spinning the
paper 180 degrees around, I mean rotating it around on the table.
You actually will need to turn the paper over near the end of the
process, but I'll make it clear then.



A completed piece.
This is your final goal for this section: to make a completed piece.
This process is actually very easy and quick; once mastered, it
ought to take you one minute per piece. (For the purposes of
photographing this process, I used a 3-inch square; you should use
a 1.5-inch square. This is why my photos will have more blue lines
on them than your squares will have.) So, start with a 1.5-inch
square of paper:

A freshly cut square of paper.
Make a precise and creased fold lengthwise. Here is what I mean:

Dividing the square in half.

Here is the process halfway through completion.
The actual purpose of this fold is just to give you a reference to
make the next two folds. Unfold the paper and lay it flat. Take the
bottom edge of the paper and fold it to the center crease; then spin
the paper 180 degrees and do the same. Here is what I mean:

The folds that you'll be making.

Here is the process halfway through completion (both folds are
shown simultaneously; you should make them one at a time, of
course).
Okay. Now, unfold the paper and lay it flat. (You will be folding the
paper here again; you just need to do some things in the meantime.
I'll refer to these folds, rather uncreatively, as "the second and third
folds" later on.) Take the bottom-right corner of the paper and fold
it into a triangle so that what was the left side of the paper now lies
on top of the second fold you made. Leave that folded, spin the
paper 180 degrees and make the same fold. Here is what I mean:

Folding two triangles.
This is the traditional fold you make when producing a (lousy)
needlenose paper airplane. Now, take the bottom-right corner of the
paper and make another needlenose-type fold. That means bringing
the fold that you just made to lie exactly on top of the second fold
you made. Then rotate the paper 180 degrees and make the same
fold. The following image's bottom-right corner shows the end result
of this process; the upper-left corner shows it halfway through
completion.

Another "needlenose" type fold.
That fold was hard to describe but easy to perform; it's used in the
production of lousy needlenose paper airplanes everywhere. Now is
the time to remake the second and third folds you made:

Okay. Now, take the bottom-left corner of the paper and fold it so
that what was the left edge of the paper now lies on top of the top
edge of the paper, producing a triangle, like this:


Rotate the paper 180 degrees and repeat. A parallelogram! Now,
you must tuck in that large triangle fold into the paper. I have no
way to easily describe this in words. Here is what I mean:

The left fold is tucked in, while the right fold is not.
Then rotate the paper 180 degrees and tuck in the other fold,
resulting in:

Good. Now flip the paper over and rotate it so that it looks like this:

The backside of the paper.
Fold the bottom point of the paper straight up to meet another
vertex of the parallelogram, like this:

Then rotate the paper 180 degrees and repeat, producing this:

Okay. Now you need to give the paper a bend in the middle. (This is
actually a mountain fold, but I could have you flip the paper over
again and make a valley fold; so what?) You will end up with this:

Now, as you can see, you have a finished piece:

Congratulations.
Now, here's a bit of useless trivia: you can actually make mirror-
images of these pieces. The crucial decision comes when you make
the triangle folds after the second and third folds. If you choose to
make them on the bottom-left and upper-right corners of the paper,
and modify subseqent folds accordingly, you end up with a left-
handed piece instead of a right-handed piece. (The pieces are
chiral, in other words.) Being right-handed and very used to making
right-handed pieces such as I've shown here, making a left-handed
piece takes a lot of time for me. (I have no idea if left-handed
people find left-handed pieces easier to make, or if right-handed
people who've never made pieces before find left- or right-handed
pieces easier to make.) However, and this is the important part,
left-handed pieces and right-handed pieces cannot be used in the
same model! They just won't fit together. So if you make one left-
handed piece, all of the pieces in your model will be left-handed. (I
also have trouble assembling left-handed pieces into models,
because everything is reversed.) Stick with right-handed pieces.
Incidentally, my best friend Uche Akotaobi delights in making left-
handed pieces, for no reason other than to annoy me. :-D
Making models:
Now that you know how to make pieces, you need to choose which
model you want to construct so that you'll know how many pieces to
make. There are four models that I know how to construct (though I
could derive how to make many other types of models).

1. The cube. A boring cube. The easiest to construct, it takes 6
pieces.
2. The octahedron. (A stellated octahedron, actually.) Takes 12
pieces. Not difficult.
3. The icosahedron. (A stellated icosahedron.) Takes 30 pieces. Also
not difficult.
4. The stellated truncated icosahedron. Takes 270 pieces... I think.
Difficult (though not overly so), but incredibly time-consuming.

I suggest that you start off with the cube and work onwards. Now
that you have enough pieces constructed to make the model of your
choice, you need to learn the basics of model construction. A piece
has two sharp corners and two pockets, which allow them to
interlock. Here are two pieces placed to illustrate this:



And here they are locked together, corner in pocket:

Here is a third piece, placed over the first two:

And here the third piece is locked in:

There is a free corner and free pocket that can be locked together.
Doing so necessitates forming the three pieces into a three-
dimension configuration that I call a peak:

It is vitally important to understand what I mean when I say "peak",
because peaks are the founding blocks of your models. (Although
you should assemble your models piece-by-piece and not make a
bunch of 3-piece peaks and then assemble the peaks. The former
works; the latter won't. Example: the cube contains three peaks,
but only requires six pieces. Solution: pieces can form more than
one peak. Trust me: go piece-by-piece.) Now you should be able to
assemble a cube. Here is a cube, pictured with a peak at the center
of the image:

A cube.
If you were unable to assemble the cube, then read on, because I
will make it even clearer. (I need to demonstrate the next fact with
an octahedron; cubes are too small). Now, here is a what I call
(somewhat confusingly), a "point". This is my own terminology; call
it what you will. Around every "point" in a model there are three or
more peaks. The lens flare in the following image shows where a
point is located relative to a peak:

This is what I mean by "point".
Here is a picture of an octahedron, with a point more or less in the
center of the image. See how four peaks are arranged around the
point?

An octahedron.
And here is an icosahedron. Icosahedra have five peaks around
every point:

An icosahedron.
Forming the first three models, therefore, is quite easy. Simply start
out with the required number of pieces (6, 12, or 30) and place 3,
4, or 5 peaks around every point until you've run out of pieces and
close the model. You will end up with a cube, an octahedron, or an
icosahedron, respectively. (It's hard to show with a single picture
how three peaks surround every "point" of a cube.) Here is a picture
to make this even more clear; you can see two points very clearly,
around both of which are five peaks (there are also two more points
on this icosahedron for which you can clearly see the five
surrounding peaks, but they're at more of an angle):

Hopefully that should make what I'm trying to say absolutely clear.
Now, here's that icosahedron missing three pieces. This is what you
should see when your model is almost completed. (Actually, the last
piece is the hardest to put in.)

To form a model, simply start with a peak, and add pieces to form
peaks in a circular fashion, until you have a point surrounded by 3,
4, or 5 peaks. Then form more points by adding more pieces to
make more peaks. Gradually this will cause the model to curve in on
itself, until finally it's almost completed like in the image above. It's
actually a self-assembling process once you understand what you're
doing. If you get really good and precise, you can form models out
of 1-inch squares, anything from cubes to icosahedra. Here are the
three 1-inch icosahedra I've made:

If you use construction paper, you can make colorful models. Here's
a blue-and-red icosahedron I whipped up:

You can also make it so that three colors of pieces make up every
peak, for a similarly cool effect.

Now, if you try to form a model with 6 peaks around a point, you
will find that it cannot be done. (Don't try it; it's a waste of time.)
You end up with sheet of peaks. Mathematically, this corresponds to
hexagons tiling a plane. There are no other regular polyhedra that
you can form. (Tetrahedra are too small, and I do not believe that
dodecahedra can be formed with these pieces.) However, have you
ever seen a soccer ball? It's made of hexagons, but with twelve
pentagons that give it enough curvature to be a ball. (To make
matters easy, the hexagons are colored white while the pentagons
are black.) You can replicate this here. This mathematical shape,
the truncated icosahedron, is also the structure of C60, the
buckminsterfullerene (which also goes by the names "fullerene" and
"buckyball"). I derived how to make this shape out of pieces on my
own, and now I'll teach it to you. I call it the "Epcot ball", for its
obvious similarity to the Epcot Center in Disneyworld. Here is a top-
on view of an Epcot ball. Notice how a 5-peak point is at the exact
center, while 6-peak points surround it in every direction:

To start making an Epcot ball, surround a 5-point peak with six-
point peaks. However, you must also know where to put the other
5-point peaks. The following image shows how. Two 5-peak points
are marked by green toothpicks. (By the way, if anyone is still
having trouble understanding what I mean by "point", there it is.
Marked by a green toothpick.) Conceptually draw a straight line
between those 5-peak points. In between, marked by lens flares,
are precisely TWO 6-peak points. No more, no less. Here is what I
mean:

The key to making an Epcot ball, therefore, is to construct a 5-peak
point, surround it with 6-peak points, and then surround it with
another ring of 6-peak points, and then add exactly five 5-peak
points so that they are two 6-peak points away from the original 5-
peak point. Repeating this process EXACTLY over the entire surface
of the model will produce an Epcot Ball. If you fail to do it exactly,
you'll end up with a mutant model that will refuse to close in on
itself. Not fun. Epcot Balls require 270 pieces and a substantial
amount of time dedicated to making them. (Note: That figure of
270 is hazily remembered by me. Actually, I've never counted the
pieces before making an Epcot ball. I just follow the pattern and
make pieces as I go. I once derived a simple formula for figuring
out the number of pieces one of these things has, but I was never
sure that the formula was correct, and in any case I've forgotten the
formula and its results. If you indeed discover that 270 pieces is not
enough to continue the pattern I've detailed here, then by all means
make more pieces. The pattern, not the number of pieces, is key.
Although I would be incredibly surprised if 270 is not the correct
number. I do remember the number being in the 200's, and being a
multiple of 30.) Due to the fact that they're mostly made of 6-peak
points, they are not nearly as rigid as the smaller models and can
be damagedEASILY by a jolt or by a drop. Be careful with the Epcot
Balls that you make. I have made exactly four Epcot Balls in my
life; I didn't take a photograph of all of them together (it would be
large!), so you'll have to take my word for it. I still have all four.
Here is a gratuitous picture of one of them:

The Epcot Ball!
Now I hope you understand what all those lengthy explanations
about peaks and points were for. They allow me to communicate
how to make the Epcot Ball in a compressed sentence like "...then
surround it with another ring of 6-peak points, and then add exactly
five 5-peak points...". Please E-mail me at stl@nuwen.net if you had
significant trouble following these instructions, so that I may revise
this page and make it easier to understand. Also feel free to E-mail
me if you've made models according to these instructions and
enjoyed it. I would also really like to know if you've made an Epcot
Ball. Agnes Harnisch used these instructions to create a very
beautiful Epcot ball - note the exquisite precision of the folds. Even
my own models don't fit together that well. ^_^ Have fun!