ORIGAMI

Fun facts

 Origami is derived from two Japanese words - Ori (folded) and Kami (paper).

 Earlier, it was called Orikata (folded shape)

 The Japanese word for paper "kami" is the same written word as the Japanese word for spirit or god and
certain origami models were part of their religious ceremonies.

 The Samurai in Japan gave each other gifts known as "noshi" that were paper folded with a strip of fish
and were considered a good luck token

 An ancient Japanese legend says that if you fold one thousand cranes you will be granted a wish

 Traditional origami uses a piece of paper in the shape of a square and does not permit any cutting.

 There are dozens of entries for origami in the Guinness Book of World Records including most folds,
smallest, biggest, fastest time for folding 100 cranes, and many more.

 The record for the longest flight indoors of an origami plane is 22.48 seconds - held by Takuo Toda, who
is credited with inventing the paper airplane.

 The smallest origami crane in the world was made by Naito Akirafolding plastic film measuring 0.1 by
0.1 mm.

 Largest origami crane measures 256 ft 6 inches.

 Origami is the theme of a play in New York called "Animals Out of Paper" in which the three main
characters all are involved in the art of paper folding.

 There are at least a dozen national origami associations throughout the world including: US, Japan,
France, Netherlands, UK, Spain, Germany, Australia, Italy, Poland, Russia, and China. The British Origami
Society was the first association and was founded in London in 1967.

 Heavy Rain - A PlayStation 3 video game, features a serial killer who lives behind an origami model and
an orchid.

 The origami crane has become an international symbol of peace. The organization named 'Wings for
Peace' made the world's largest crane in 1999. It was 215 feet tall, and it weighed 1,750 pounds. The
largest number of origami cranes was created as part of the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the
atom bomb on Hiroshima. A total of 250,000 paper cranes were folded and displayed in a large
memorial in the city. Each had a person's name on it and a short, peaceful message.

 Oldest origami illustration: Paper boats floating on a body of water with a sun in the background. By
Johannes di Sacrobesco in Venice in 1490.
How origami related to math

History

In 1893, Indian mathematician T. Sundara Rao published "Geometric Exercises in Paper Folding"
which used paper folding to demonstrate proofs of geometrical constructions.[1] This work was
inspired by the use of origami in the kindergarten system. This book had an approximate
trisection of angles and implied construction of a cube root was impossible. In 1936 Margharita
P. Beloch showed that use of the 'Beloch fold', later used in the sixth of the Huzita–Hatori
axioms, allowed the general cubic equation to be solved using origami.[2] In 1949, R C Yeates'
book "Geometric Methods" described three allowed constructions corresponding to the first,
second, and fifth of the Huzita–Hatori axioms.[3][4] The axioms were discovered by Jacques
Justin in 1989.[5] but were overlooked until the first six were rediscovered by Humiaki Huzita in
1991. The first International Meeting of Origami Science and Technology (now known as the
International Conference on Origami in Science, Math, and Education) was held in 1989 in
Ferrara, Italy.

Origami & facts

For instance, when you fold the traditional waterbomb base, you have created a crease pattern
with eight congruent right triangles. The traditional bird base produces a crease pattern with
many more triangles, and every reverse fold (such as the one to create the bird's neck or tail)
creates four more! Any basic fold has an associated geometric pattern. Take a squash fold -
when you do this fold and look at the crease pattern, you will see that you have bisected an
angle, twice! Can you come up with similar relationships between a fold and something you
know in geometry? You can get even more ideas from this presentation on Origami: In Creasing
Geometry in the Classroom.

On the other hand, if you are a person who likes puzzles, there are a number of great
origami challenges that you might enjoy trying to solve. These puzzles involve folding a piece of
paper so that certain color patterns arise, or so that a shape of a certain area results. But let's
continue on with crease patterns...