Pure as Snow

ISEF 2011 Day 8 - Final Day

2011-06-04T22:42:00.000+08:00

Day 8 was just a day of touring around. In the morning, we visited Macy's Plaza which was supposed to be a must-go shopping center in LA. I'm not a big fan of shopping but I spent the wandering time thinking about math and it turned out to be quite a productive period. It seems that you can only think about your favorite things when it's not possible to think of other things (like in as shopping mall).

"Japanese" lunch

We went to Hollywood next, but again I didn't feel much about all the "cosplaying" employees.

Cosplay

Madame Tussauds

Hard Rock Cafe

Souvenir shop - I think "Boyfriend of the Year" is quite hilarious.

We had lunch at McDonald's where there were TVs showing us live feed from the security cameras.

Try and spot me.

Finally on the flight home. It's been so long that I only remember the food:

I love omelettes.

I think I ate too much egg on this trip.

ISEF 2011 Day 7

2011-06-03T21:05:00.005+08:00

Day 7 - First thing in the morning was the Grand Awards Ceremony. Same great Hall, very long ceremony again. The categories were divided into the Life Sciences and Physical Sciences; the Fourth Award winners of each Life Science category were announced, then the Fourth Awards of the Physical Sciences, the Third Awards of the Life Sciences, the Third Awards of the Physical Sciences and so on. Each category has a large number of Fourth Award winners, many Third Award winners, a few Second Award winners and two First Award winners.

Some of the Fourth Awards of the Life Sciences

My room mate in red - Tan Yuan Jin getting a Second Award in Microbiology

The other two Singaporean finalists - (from left) Ng Qin Xiang and Matthew Lee sharing a Second Award from their team project on Environmental Management

Representative from the MIT Lincoln Lab

Straight from the program booklet:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lincoln Laboratory, Ceres Connection

Lincoln Lab has partnered with SSP and the Intel ISEF to promote science education through the Ceres Connection. The names of first and second place category award winners at Intel ISEF will be submitted to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for naming of a minor planet. All minor planets in the Ceres Connection have been discovered by the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program, operated by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.

I think "minor planet" means "asteroid". The above representative from the Lab assured us that our namesakes would be too far away from Earth to be a potential cause of destruction on Earth.

I got a First Award in Computer Science!

I don't know how the cool effect in the above photo happened...

One of the two First Awardees also gets Best in Category. Not me, though :)

The Top Awards were awarded to a few projects out of all the Best in Categories. They are:

The Gordon E. Moore Award (the best project in ISEF 2011)
Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award
Dudley R. Herschbach SIYSS Award
European Union Contest for Young Scientists

The three on the right are from Thailand. They studied how to turn fish scales into plastics. Impressive!

Now everyone can really just relax ^_^

Team Singapore. red blazers - finalists, rightmost - Dr. Wulf, other adults - supervisors

We decided to tour the Los Angeles Science Center, so we set off to have lunch somewhere near there. On the way, we came across a demonstration by schoolchildren and parents/teachers. Apparently, their school was facing budget cuts and teachers were getting laid off. Here we have really young children shouting "Save our teachers! Save our Teachers!"

I have a video of a much longer and denser chain of demonstrators but it was too long for Blogger.

We had lunch at a Quizno's outlet:

Huge burrito filled with all sorts of ingredients. There was chili hidden in the lettuce!!! >.<

Huge seagull strutting around the Science Center grounds

We spent a very long time inside the store on the first floor of the Science Center.

Very beautiful glass ornaments!

One of the Science Center displays was some pictures hung along a corridor wall. Click on the pictures to enlarge. The detail should be enough to read the text in the bottom left of each frame.

I ended up spending a lot of time talking about the mathematics of bubbles and Conway's Game of Life to one of the supervisors.

The whole troop went to Chinatown for dinner. There's too much to talk about so instead I won't talk about it :) Here's an interesting signboard at its Metro station:

Click to read the individual fines in more detail. Their mascots are cuter than the ones in Singapore.

Speaking of the Metro, the train accelerates and decelerates quite often so you feel your body getting jerked around (you have to hold the pole tightly). The MRT in Singapore has a much smoother ride and the trains look cleaner too.

ISEF 2011 Day 6

2011-06-03T14:47:00.001+08:00

Day 7 was public visits day and Special Awards Ceremony at night. Finalists were supposed to stand by their booths and introduce their project to the public.

National Museum of Crime and Punishment?

There were many, many visitors of all ages from the public, and there were many "tour groups" walking around. Many Japanese visitors stopped by my booth :)

After some time at my booth I started visiting the other booths because I hardly had time to do that before judging day.

A project on Matrices!

Drum Pants. A device you put in your jeans so slapping your thighs makes a drumming sound.

Complicated-looking water sanitation machine.

Multidimensional Integration based on a Monte Carlo Method

Every finalist had some lunch coupons to buy food from Los Angeles Convention Center, but I misplaced them so I bought my own lunch from Quizno's. Turns out I had put the coupons inside my bag and forgotten about them.

The Singapore delegation had dinner with Dr. Wulf Hofbauer (The ISEF judge from Singapore) at California Pizza Kitchen. Dr. Wulf is the kind of person who talks freely about anything so we got on pretty well. When we were reading the menu and deciding out orders, I voiced my concern that we might order too much and not be able to finish everything. Dr. Wulf replied, "Oh yes, we have to be careful, I read on some blog that on the first day of ISEF, someone went to the Original Pantry Cafe and he couldn't finish his Fish and Chips."

If you don't get his reference... nevermind.

I had three slices of this pizza as well as a slice or two of another pizza with avocado chunks on it.

The climax of the day was definitely the Special Awards Ceremony. In the same huge hall as the Opening Ceremony, representatives from different agencies/societies/organizations went on stage one by one to give their awards.

My supervisor (rightmost) got the Agilent Teacher Award!

I won the Association for Computing Machinery's Second Award! All Singaporean finalists have to wear bright red blazers so it should be pretty easy to find me.

I also won the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Society's Second Prize:

See that lanyard I'm wearing? It's covered with my favorite pins from the Pin Exchange Ceremony, and it's one of my favorite souvenirs from ISEF :)

The First Prize winner for that award gets a printed copy of the first patent ever made :)

The following are some cool awarding organizations.

Cute logo and cool guy

ISEF 2011 Day 5 - Judging!

2011-05-31T22:37:00.210+08:00

Judging day!... Actually, I've been rehearsing my presentation many, many times before this day, but I can't exactly remember when those times were so I didn't blog about it. But anyway, I felt more or less prepared so I enjoyed my breakfast at Denny's again. We found an interesting brochure on the table:

Front (click to see in more detail)

Back

What I ordered was rather healthier. I had resolved to take pictures of food, but when the mouthwatering dish arrives, recording its image becomes the least of my concerns and I only remember to take photos after a few bites.

Omelette with tomatoes, vegetables, onions, mushrooms and cheese inside as filling. Grits at the back and two slices of toast at the side.

It's quite torturing to blog about tasty food when I'm recovering from the food poisoning I got a few days ago, and I have to watch what I eat. After breakfast we proceeded to the exhibit hall for judging.

A ton of souvenirs left by various agencies ^_^

Sharp observers will notice that the color of my mouse had changed. Indeed, the night before, I had left my laptop at my exhibit for the round of judges who skim through posters at night (and leave souvenirs), and some stroke of folly made me bring my mouse back to the hotel. When I realized that I had forgotten to bring my mouse on judging day, I managed to keep my cool and contacted my supervisor, who passed me his own mouse outside the hall. Thank goodness he had one!

One floor above the entrance to the hall, there were windows like the above photo allowing judges to look into the hall from their rooms. Interestingly, a couple of judges were waving to some people in the hall and taking their photos.

The following is my judging schedule. Every finalist gets a card like this that tells us the names and allocated slots of our scheduled Grand Awards judges. Each session lasts for 15 minutes, and at the end of every session. a hall-wide announcement is made asking judges to move on to their next poster.

During Session 1, Other than the three judges on the card, some unscheduled judges interviewed me as well, including a team from the Association of Computing Machinery.

I was fascinated by the display on my left:

CS011 - Additional POV Display for Your Computer

Dmitry Alexandrovich Kabak, 17, Junior, Polytechnical Gymnasium N6., Minsk, Belarus

Dmitry's project was about Persistence Of Vision (POV) devices. He built the following device, a rotating cylinder with three columns of LEDs (each column being red, green and blue respectively). A user draws a design in his computer program, and the cylinder spins on its vertical axis while the program causes specific LEDs to flash at the appropriate moments so the persistence of vision causes the user's design to appear. The following is a video showing the device in action (He saw my name from my lanyard while I was gawking at the device):

A small portion of Dmitry's poster

I also a took a video of a finalist juggling a few green balls (they flash in different colors on impact - free gifts from Google), and later, his mobile phone as well, but Blogger rejected the video -_-

Some people were really carefree during judging, probably owing to the long free periods between judges. During one of those free periods, I met Dr. Wulf Hofbauer, the Singapore Science and Engineering Fair (SSEF) judge sent to judge at ISEF.

The finalists all had lunch during the break (1145 - 1315), and the supervisors of Team Singapore bought lunch for its finalists. I had a sumptuous Japanese meal: rice with salmon, tempura prawns and vegetables.

In the second period, only the scheduled judges came to my booth.

Interesting mode of transport

After the second period, there was a break (1515 - 1615) followed by a period for "Unscheduled Interviews" (1615 - 1800). Up to about 1730, my only interview was by a judge from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Society, but in the last half an hour a sudden crowd of Grand Awards judges interviewed me. I could feel that those Grand Awards judges were more high-level now, as they asked more probing and difficult questions than previous judges. Interestingly, one judge's name was "Demain". It was a real pity that they came so late, because I still had more to say when they had to leave for other interviews. While I was packing up at 1800, a final Grand Awards judge came up and interviewed me. Ironically, because the time was up, the time restriction no longer mattered and I spoke with her for very long, telling her all of the additional information about my project.

In sum, all of the judges were very nice people ("reward the best and encourage the rest") and it seemed like I did okay in impressing the 20-odd judges who interviewed me.

Finally, we could relax!!! Team Singapore went back to Hotel Figueroa to change to more casual wear. Soon after, we set off for LA's Universal Studios!

One of those photos that can prove that you've been there

Straight from the program booklet:

7:00 p.m.–Midnight Intel ISEF Night at Universal Studios Hollywood

For one night, Universal Studios Hollywood belongs to Intel ISEF. Only Official Parties will be admitted to the park. Buses will start departures from the Convention Center at 6:00 p.m. Departures from all of the official Intel ISEF block hotels will begin at 6.:15 p.m. Guests will enjoy exclusive access to rides, including the Simpsons, Revenge of the Mummy, Jurassic Park the Ride, and Shrek 4-D. Studio tours will be running until 9:30 p.m. Concession stands will be open and will offer a variety of dining options at no charge. Guests are also welcome to visit Universal Walk, where they will find a number of shopping opportunities as well as restaurants and nightclubs. Universal Walk is open to the general public and is NOT for the exclusive use of Intel ISEF participants. All activities in Universal Walk are at the expense of the participant and not Intel

ISEF. Transportation back from the park to all block hotels will be continuous throughout the evening until midnight.

In short, ISEF Finalists and their supervisors have free admission to Universal Studios (which has been booked by Intel solely for ISEF Official Parties), free rides and free food! We all got a special lanyard:

The paper in the lanyard is actually a folded map of Universal Studios.

Surprisingly, since I'm not really in touch with movies and that kind of culture, the displays didn't really draw my attention. My supervisor and I had dinner first:

Black tray: my supervisor's meal - fried chicken and fries in a basket, a plate of noodles with sweet and sour pork, broccoli and cauliflowers. Foreground: my meal - chocolate cake underneat the kosher label, a pretzel (also kosher) on top of a "mystery package" which contains:

Rice, salmon and long beans in some nice sourish sauce. Very hot and tasty.

I brought the chocolate cake and pretzel back to the hotel and stored them in the fridge.

The lighting in the area was woefully inadequate, and I had night blindess, so it was a little hard to move around. I went on the Jurassic Park ride, which was around my tolerance level (which shows how low it is). I really liked the Simpsons Ride, because there was a solid storyline that was slowly revealing itself to us (through surrounding TV screens) even while we were queuing up for the ride. Too bad the screen was too large, and I had tunnel vision, so I couldn't catch everything.

ISEF 2011 Day 4

2011-05-19T16:23:00.038+08:00

There wasn't much to do on Day 4, so I don't have many photos. We had breakfast at the cafe in Hotel Figueroa's lobby for the first time. To recap, here's a picture of the cafe:

See the long table next to the men in white and below the chandelier? They put many tureens, each containing a certain food item, on the table, buffet style. You walk down the aisle with your plate, collecting servings of the food, and you are charged at the counter (near the men in white) according to the amount you take. My memory is very clear for food, so starting from the back you have the following (all prices in US Dollars):

Trays
Glasses and orange juice - $0.50 a cup
(shallow -_-) bowls, milk and cereal (corn flakes, banana flakes, muesli) - $2 a bowl
Syrup and pancakes - $0.50 each
Scrambled eggs - $1.50 per serving (as long as you don't pile heaps they call it one serving)
Bacon and sausages - 3 pieces (of either) for $1.75
Fried potato flakes - forgot the price
Steamed rice - $1.50 per serving I think
Bun - $0.75 each
Cheese - expensive so I forgot the price
Butter - free
Muffins - $1.20 each

Quite a spread, and here's what I took:

Juice, 3 strips of bacon, one pancake buried under the bacon, lots of scrambled eggs + salt + pepper (yum!), lots of potatoes, ketchup, syrup, butter. Tasty!!!

Later during the day was when finalists who still had not cleared their Display and Safety checks had their last chance to fix up their projects. I rehearsed my presentation a little at my poster during that period. The scary thing was that three judges from CERN came over and interviewed me for the CERN Special Award (which I had applied for) even though judging was supposed to be tomorrow. I think I did pretty well, although you can't really predict from the judges' reactions, since they were told to "reward the best, encourage the rest", and all the judges I had were nice to me. I think it's reasonable to say that ISEF judges were like that in general.

The Excellence in Science and Technology Discussion Panel was in the afternoon. We went back to the big hall where a panel of 6 Nobel Laureates answered questions from a large audience.

In no order, the Nobel Laureates are:

Paul Berg, Chemistry (1980)
Michael J. Bishop, Physiology or Medicine (1989)
Martin Chalfie, Chemistry (2008)
Dudley Hershbach, Chemistry (1986)
Robert H. Horvitz, Chemistry (2002)
Douglas Osheroff, Physics (1996)
Richard Roberts, Physiology or Medicine (1993)

Apparently, one of them was missing, and I don't know who was. Medicine and the highly related Chemistry

were strongly represented, and there was only one Physics Nobel Laureate (he might even have been the missing guy). They should have invited Fields Medalists or Economics Nobel Laureates to represent Mathematics! None of the Nobel Laureates were Asians, too.

Someone asked this question: "If you could dine with three people of your choice, who would they be and why?" Someone sitting close to me muttered, "sounds just like a college essay question." I agree, and I think a better question could have been asked instead of it since their time was very limited.

Me asking a question!

One of my favourite responses from the Nobel Laureates (I think it might have been Michael J. Bishop) went something like this: "When someone asks me what use some piece of research can be of, I ask him what the use of a newborn baby is."

ISEF 2011 Day 3

2011-05-18T16:03:00.004+08:00

Breakfast began with all of us gathered in one hotel room and pooling food: we had bagels, cream cheese, Pringles, frozen strawberries (one of the teachers set the fridge to freezer mode by accident), bread and canned tuna.

Most of the food we ended up having

My half-eaten bagel

The texture of the frozen strawberries was like ice-cream but if only they were sweeter...

Project display set-up continued at LA Convention Center, and I finally passed all the safety checks. If you enter the exhibit and immediately look to your right, you can see one row of the Computer Science posters:

My poster is at CS009 near the middle of the picture. Two people are reading it now.

My final set-up

My project is about folding axial symmetric polyhedra, which are some kinds of 3D solids that have rotational symmetry. Last July at the Fifth International Conference on Origami in Science, Mathematics and Education, I attended Jun Mitani's lecture on folding these kinds of solids, and his models followed the target solids well except for some external protrusions. I thought of a way to hide those protrusions inside the solid instead by stacking up simpler solids that I had already derived algorithms for in previous projects. I also wrote a computer program that allows user to specify their target solid and generate its crease pattern.

Check out Jun Mitani's Flickr photostream with all his beautiful models and even a link to the program he wrote!

Of course, I was eager to check out the only other origami project in the hall, so i visited 木村さん's booth:

Her project was about investigating polyhedra that tessellate space and folding them using origami. Here's a closer shot of the huge assortment of models on her table:

Folded polyhedra from her project that tessellate space

More polyhedra, as well as other models by other researchers in the top right corner. Starting from the orange crane, we have Koryo Miura's map fold hidden behind a large orange origami cylinder (whose design was it?) and Kaori Kuribayashi's (she was at 5OSME) origami stents.

You can also see photocopies of her abstract on the table. Every finalist had stacks of them on the table for interested visitors to take.

After visiting around, I attended a symposium titled "Talking Science", where a public speaking professional taught us good presentation skills. It was mainly about deciding on a few core messages you want to bring across and using every opportunity to guide the interviewer so you end up talking about those core messages. He got a couple of volunteers from the audience to get interviewed in the "before" state. At the end of the symposium, he interviewed them again to see their improved performance in the "after" state. I wish I got picked as a volunteer...

"Before"

Video critique of the "Before" interview

After the symposium, I visited the E-lounge, which was a huge room with a "theater corner":

Loungers watching TRON: Legacy

The rest of the room contained a large number of laptops which had internet access. The E-lounge is a place designated for finalists or official parties to use the Internet, and it's open most of the time.

On the streets of LA again, I spotted a structure that my algorithm could fold:

There was a buffet dinner before the Opening Ceremony, and I saw Ramona Flowers:

All the finalists and everyone with anything to do with ISEF were seated in this gigantic hall for the Opening Ceremony:

The masters of ceremony throughout ISEF were big shots, which shows how high-budget the whole event was. The host of the Opening Ceremony was Chad Zdenek, "host of the G4 network's It's Effin' Science".

There was a cool performance by a drum group (?):

Seriously, the opening ceremony was like a concert. We watched a video of some well-funded experiment about water jet-packs. Too bad my camera ran out of battery right when we got to the actual testing, and too bad the video seems to large for Blogger to handle -_-

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, gave a keynote speech. The most memorable part of it wasn't the speech itself, but a (roughly) 5-minute exclusive preview of the yet-to-be-released Kung Fu Panda 2.

ISEF 2011 Day 2

2011-05-17T17:55:00.010+08:00

I didn't take many photos from Day 2, because it was mostly project set-up in the morning to the afternoon. We had breakfast at Denny's (can't recall the exact name).

A "Grand Slamwich" (toast, cheese, eggs, bacon and ham) with grits (the fried potato at the back)

I got bored while waiting for the bill so I twisted a paper napkin into this rose. It's a great model with a simple concept (twist the periphery of the napkin while holding the center) that can give beautiful results with a bit of practice.

Here's a shot of Los Angeles Convention Center's Tom Bradley Exhibit Hall, where the judging would be held.

View from the hall entrance.

The large boards in the background near the center is the HUB area, where volunteers man stations like an information booth and a booth giving stickers that allow you to take things out of the hall.

A plan of all the categories, their booths and the various languages spoken by the finalists there

We took so long to get the huge frame of my poster up that my supervisor and I actually appeared (at 0:23) in the short video montage of the "Intel ISEF 2011 Highlights":

My initial set-up (two frames hinged together at the middle)

After we put everything up on the table, we asked the ISEF officials to do a Display and Safety Check of my display. My display ran into problems because the sides of the frames extended beyond the sides of the table; the entire display had to fit within the boundaries of the table. The safety check official was very helpful, but he immediately started giving some very scary suggestions:

Official: "Don't worry, we've sorted out many oversize projects before - let's ask someone who has actual experience in that."

The official brought another volunteer from the HUB to my display.

New official: "I don't see a problem, if we saw here and here, we can superimpose the pieces to fit them within table."

Me: "(shocked) Maybe we can just solve this just by closing the hinges a little?"

Official: "How about we remove the hinges, remove the table and stack the two frames one above the other?"

New Official: "Yeah, they're not so strict about the height restriction, so that would work."

Me: "(closing the hinges so everything fit inside the table) How about this?"

Officials: "Oh, I didn't notice that! Thanks for telling me before I destroyed your project!"

I can't remember the whole exchange, but it went something like that ;)

We visited a huge supermarket near the hotel where I bought water, chocolates (for souvenirs), bananas and two boxes of strawberries to share with my roommate. Listen on to find out what happened to the fruits XD

That night was pin exchange, where all 1543 ISEF finalists were in one hall in J W Marriot Hotel and we exchanged collar pins and badges from our countries. As the program booklet promised, there were "food, music and good times for all".

Some tables for us to have dinner and chat at

I came armed with 30 NUS High School badges and 100 pins from the Singapore Science and Engineering Fair 2011. I had a bit of dinner, during which team Singapore met a Canadian who was born in Singapore and had studied in Raffles Girls' School before she left, as well as Saaket from Ohio, who we would be run into very often during ISEF. I'd been learning Japanese for a few months so I was eager to test it out and i searched for Japanese finalists while exchanging pins. I soon ran into Morikawa Yoshito (森川義仁), who I had no problem identifying because he was wearing "日本" on his shirt, as all the Japanese finalists turned out to be.

Me: "あんなたはにほんじんですか。" (are you Japanese?)

森川さん: "ええ、にほんじんです。" (yes, I am Japanese.)

Me: "いっしょにしゃしんをとりませんか。" (do you want to take a picture together?)

森川さん: "うまい! うまい!" (wow, pro! - referring to my Japanese)

He may have said that but I know I'm still a beginner - see how I type all my Japanese in Hiragana :)

森川義仁さん

Other than the Japanese with their "日本" jackets, a few other teams had special dress too, including the Koreans who wore Hanboks. The team from Argentina made a ruckus a few times:

I had nearly finished exchanging all of my pins by the end of the event. As I made my way out of the hall, I spotted another Japanese finalist and I asked her if she knew any Japanese finalist who was from Ritsumeikan Junior and Senior High School (立命館宇治中学校・高等学校), since I will be going there on an exchange program this year. Turns out she was the only finalist from that school, and she was Kimura Mari (木村麻里), who I'd communicated with a while back. She had presented her project (also about origami) at the International Students Science Fair 2010 in Australia, and my friends from NUS High who had also participated told me about her project. I had then asked her about the details of her project through email.

On the right: 木村麻里さん

After exiting the pin exchange hall, I managed to finish off all my pins by camping next to the escalator leading down from the hall. That meant that I had more than 100 pins (I gave some away "for free").

Back in our rooms, my room-mate Yuan Jin and I put the fruits in the fridge that came with the room and I tried some of the strawberries. They were a little sour but nice and juicy, and they were great for a snack. When I took the box out of the fridge to take more strawberries, I fumbled and half the strawberries in that box tumbled out onto the floor. To save food, I washed all of them and ate them one by one without Yuan Jin, who resolutely refused to be part of the environmentally-friendly effort.

Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2011 Day 1

2011-05-10T12:53:00.003+08:00

Seems like my blog only revives during big events! I blog to record my experiences at big events so I have something to refer to when I forget parts of them. I’m at Los Angeles now, taking part in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2011. I couldn’t get the Internet until today...

Day 1

I took a 4-hour flight from Singapore to Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific, and I watched Shaolin (新少林寺) on the plane. The inflight lunch was great but I forgot to photograph it so all I can remember is rice with salmon and vegetables. Hong Kong International Airport was an interesting place; there were mountains all around it.

The airport had a few exhibits on Chinese culture, such as Beijing Opera and Traditional Chinese Medicine. There were high-rise buildings clearly in sight of the airport:

We didn’t spend long there and we soon transferred to our 13-hour flight to LA. Again, the food (dinner) was really good and I started taking food photos:

(From top left and clockwise) Smoked salmon with cucumber and diced potatoes in cream, TimTam chocolate bar, Haagan Dasz vanilla ice-cream, salted peanuts (appetizer before the meal arrived), orange juice, green beans, baked fish, baked potato. The bun is missing because I ate it before remembering to take this photo.

Each seat had a power socket, which impressed me a lot until I tried charging my laptop and it didn’t work. Apparently I was just unlucky because my neighbour’s power socket worked and he was charging two handphones. I played Metal Slug 3 on my laptop with my project supervisor until the power ran out:

End of Mission 2 (yes I'm the player on the left)

It was really hard to sleep on the plane so I only managed to get a couple of hours of sleep until I left off. In the meantime I watched Green Hortet and Inglorius Basterds. In a few hours came Brunch:

Omelette with baked beans, potatoes, sausages, bacon and crossiant (read items have been eaten before the picture was taken)

I noticed a really nice pattern on the lower half of their cups:

Right before landing, the in-flight entertainment system had some problem and had to be rebooted. We found out that the system used Linux:

We landed at about 1pm in Los Angeles, and we took a bus to Figueroa Hotel. We passed by the Los Angeles Convention Center, where ISEF 2011 would be held.

We got to Hotel Figueroa, which supposedly has a Moroccan theme. We also found to our dismay that internet came at USD$5 per 24 hour period...

Team Singapore went for early registration at Los Angeles Convention Center, where we received our Finalist lanyard. If it was misplaced, we'd have to pay USD$200 to replace it!

They always miss out the second word in the first name... >.<

My supervisor and I in front of the entrance to the contest area, Tom Bradley Exhibition Hall.

As we went for dinner, we saw a few interesting sights. L.A. has mainly low-rise buildings and humongous signboards, while Singapore has high-rise buildings (think HDB) and tiny signboards. We also caught this on the streets:

So many screens showing the same scene - see if you can spot the real screens and their reflections!

We had dinner at the "Original Pantry Cafe":

Huge hunk of bread with butter - really nice :)

Coleslaw. It had black pepper in it, is that supposed to be the norm?

Fish and Chips - my order (and almost everyone else's). The portion was extremely large and all of us except one adult could finish what we ordered.

What my table looked like after we couldn't shovel down any more.

And that concludes Day 1.

5OSME For Real!

2010-07-15T21:44:00.025+08:00

Oh my god.

Yup that's me in the center, between Erik and Martin Demaine (Erik's dad), two of the best origami theorists in the world.

What happened? 5OSME happened! I'll be posting on what happened during the conference part of of 5OSME, which just ended today.

Day 0: Tuesday, 13 July, SMU School of Business, Level 2

2-5 pm was exhibition setup for the exhibitors then an evening reception for all conference registrants. There were many glass cabinets for the various exhibits, some along the corridors and others in rooms. I went over to set up my exhibits in these tall glass cabinets. You can see some of my exhibits in these photo:

That's Nikhil squatting down to arrange his own exhibits and Darrel Tan and Michael Ang respectively. Yuan Chen Yang is standing behind Michael. I'd made a presentation to the whole school to persuade the students to join 5OSME and the school to subsidize their fees, and I sort of succeeded; Michael and Chen Yang are attending the conference, and about 20 other NUS High students will be attending the convention tomorrow.

My exhibits are on the 1st and 3rd compartments from the top in the cabinet in front of Nikhil. They include the "Prosperity" model (that has been re-christened "Fortune"), "Honeycomb", "House" and "House on a Turtle" that have appeared in previous posts. I've taken more detailed photos of the new ones:

A House grafted onto John Montroll's Hermit Crab from "Origami Sea Life". Two sheets of Thai Silk Paper, sandwiching a piece of kitchen foil and glued together.

I met many folders from Origami Singapore who were also exhibiting their works, like Linford and Cheng Chit. Cheng Chit was also helping set up the models that have been submitted for the Merlion Challenge, where folders from all over the world submit their own designs for the merlion.

Best of all, many renowned origami artists also appeared at the scene. Linford was the first to point out Kamiya Satoshi who had his classic dragon and, below it, a grasshopper and frog that looked godly real. Even better, while I was fixing my exhibits, Erik and Martin Demaine walked right into the room. I was kind of in shock until my mom took the picture at the top of this post.

We introduced ourselves, and I showed him my exhibit. They were particularly interested in the "5OSME" and "Fortune" model because I was folding orthogonal paths, which was similar to their research. I also demonstrated how I grafted my House onto a turtle and a hermit crab. They took a few pictures and said that we ought to have a little discussion about my paper, since I would be presenting two days later. That, of course, got me quite excited, and I got his name card to send him the draft of my paper.

Next was the food which was superb; I spotted Robert Lang among the registrants. Some announcements were made, including one about 6OSME which would be held in Japan around 2014. Finally, we all went home with full stomachs, satisfied.

I hurried home to send him my paper and continue composing my presentation, which was only 30% done at that moment.

Day 1: Wednesday, 14 July, SMU School of Accountancy

The lectures began! At the beginning, Patsy Wang-Iverson mentioned that Eileen Tan from Origami Singapore was the "brains" behind the whole effort of organizing 5OSME (thanks a million Eileen!!!). Some conversation ensued where Patsy recounted how Singapore was chosen to host 5OSME. Turns out, Patsy, Eileen, Robert Lang and Erik Demaine were at some dinner when Patsy said to Erik: "I was looking through your bio when I noticed that in all the places you've been to, you've never travelled to Singapore!" Robert then quipped, "Hey, let's have 5OSME in Singapore!" Patsy then turned to Eileen and asked if she could organize the event, and that's how it happened. Well, I'm glad it turned out this way, of course ^_^

Patsy (left) and Eileen (right)

5OSME - participants from around the world!

The keynote lecture was presented by Erik, who talked about how he, from a mathematics background, and his father, from an artistic background, constantly "pulled each other in the opposite direction" in their research collaborations until both of them ended somewhere in the middle where math and art collided. When he was young, he and his dad started a company called "Erik & Dad Co." where Erik made puzzles and his dad made and sold them:

He talked about the various kinds of research he did and introduced some that others did too; his dad, a glass-blower, worked with him to produce "glass origami", where they connected strips of the stiff white glass and soft black glass together, then heated the combination in a furnace to partially melt the glass strips and cause them to bend and deform into elegant curved forms:

He also mentioned research on "transformers", a piece of "paper" made of many triangles of metal hinging on each other that could, on command, fold itself into a variety of shapes. He also talked about "self-folding origami", where one put creases on the paper and it folds itself automatically into interesting shapes. One such model is the hyperbolic paraboloid folded using concentric squares.

He then said: "I then realized that this model did not exist mathematically! It doesn't exist! It's..." and he crumpled up the "hypar" and threw it away. "... I was so disappointed. Wow, that effect was good, I should try it again sometime." He also talked about how to wrap perfectly spherical chocolate efficiently with foil. He's also currently working on reconstructing the models and calculations that some famous computer scientist David Huffman made, which all used curved creases.

He also talked about a ton of other things, but unfortunately they didn't stick in my head that well :)

During the break, I met his students Aviv Ovadya and Jason Ku, who were working on folding orthogonal paths. We talked for quite a bit and I got Aviv's phone number, then I left for the other lectures.

There were many concurrent lectures, 3 going on an any one time. The following summarizes the interesting lectures I went to:

Technical Tesselations: Hidden Beauties (Klett, Yves and Drechsler, Klaus)
The authors investigated the use of origami tesselations that were very strong and resistant to compression inside airplane parts like the fuselage and wing. He showed us one of the tesellations that, despite its small size, could withstand the weight of a car.

The Origami Crash Box (Ma Jiayao and You Zhong)
Every car's bumper is connected to two "crash boxes" that are in turn connected to the car body.
These small boxes absorb energy by deforming when the car crashes, reducing the force that reaches the car body. The authors studied conventional crash boxes and identified the parts that absorbed the most energy, then they designed origami crash boxes that are better at absorbing energy after deformation/folding.

Degenerative Coordinates in a 22.5 degrees Grid System (Tomohiro Tachi and Erik Demaine)
22.5 degrees is half a 45-degree angle. Starting from the 4 corners of a square, one can fold new lines by folding one point onto another or folding one line onto another, and also by folding the perpendiculars of lines that pass through a certain point. One can also define new points by finding the intersection of creases. A set D consists of the coordinates that can be constructed using only lines that form an angle of some multiple of 22.5 degrees with the square. A formula was given and it was proved that all coordinates in D satisfy that formula, and all numbers of that formula lie in D. The set D is closed under the addition, subtraction and multiplication of two coordinates. Some useful properties of this set D were covered, and alternative grid systems like a 15 degrees system were also briefly introduced.

Twisting Origami Lamp (Tomoko Fuse and Kaori Kuribayashi)
The authors came up with an origami tesselation that, when folded, closes into a cylinder; some math was derived to produce the tesselation patterns for such cylinders, and the cylinders were sort of "twisted" such that turning the two ends of the cylinder one way would open the cylinder and turning the other way would close it. Many cylinders with alternating twisting direction and colours were joined together (blue-white-yellow-white-blue-white-yellow-white), and when the ends of this long cylinder were turned one way, the white cylinders closed while the blue and white cylinders opened, and the opposite happens when turning in the other direction, resulting in a nice color-change effect. The authors are planning to commercialize the lamps (putting LED bulbs into the cylinders) and are also planning an exhibition of the lamps.

Oribotics (Matthew Gardner)
The author folds a distorted waterbomb base tesselation out of cloth and mounts it on a mechanical skeleton fitted with LEDs and sensors so the end product is a flower that reacts to movement and sound, opening and closing the flower and changing the color of the light. He introduces his technique of folding cloth (borrowed from the French), which is as follows: fold two sheets of paper into the final design and unfold them. Cut out a sheet of polyurethane cloth using a laser cutter (which melts the plastic where it cuts so edges are not frayed) of the same size as the unfolded sheets of paper. sandwich the fabric between the paper, clipping them firmly together, then re-fold the design and bake in a oven (with some water to keep the air moist) at 160 to 200 degrees Celsius. The resultant cloth is sharply creases where it should be, and is springy and flexible but never loses its original form even when stretched and opened up totally; it just springs back to the original shape after releasing it. The author mentions that folding Kawasaki's Rose using cloth gives an aesthetically appealing result.

That's all for the lectures. During one of the other breaks I listened in as Wil Chua from Origami Singapore discussed with Joseph Wu about doing origami as a career; Joseph says that anyone who wants to do origami for advertisers should do origami as a hobby and get a job in an advertising agency for some time to find out what kind of deadlines they want, how many revisions are the norm, what demands are made and so on. When the folder goes pro, it helps him to see what's normal and what's not. Good advice, I think. There was also a screening of Between the Folds, which I was actually starting to get a little bored of because I've watched it too many times :)

The best part of the day was yet to come! There was a Conference Banquet at the Hotel Rendezvous, and the food was marvelous, but the peak of the party was the entertainment. Jason Ku and Brian Chan had made a star wars/origami parody 5-minute video that they showed to us; apparently they made it 3 years ago and it's on youtube.

Next, Jason, Robert Lang, Andrew Hudson and Daniel Myer went onstage to sing A Capella with a song composed by Jason. Apparently it's an origami parody of some song that I don't know. The video's on youtube! I'm feeling kind enough to post the lyrics here... I suggest you copy these lyrics into a notepad and read it while they sing on youtube.

Chorus
Do you see the people fold?
Folding some paper now and then,
It is the pastime of a people who will never cut again!
When the tools of your art
Consist of your fingers and your thumbs
Origami's in your heart when convention comes!

Verse 1
Now I'm precreasing the folds in this crease pattern endlessly.
Precreasing's getting old I should go redesign this tree...
A packing of circles should fill the plane efficiently!

Verse 2
You see, the universe unfolds when you fold up a horse, or cat.
Kawasaki's theorem holds when you fold all your paper flat!
But if you use spheres or hyperboloids it changes that!

Verse 3
We're here at 5-O-S-M-E: in Singapore I'm told.
The jet lag makes me sing off key; I'm not awake to fold.
But someone please tell me why all the rooms are so cold!

Verse 4
I came to this convention and looked at the abstract list:
Too many things to mention, even spiderwebs that twist!
And hyper paraboloids really don't even exist!

Verse 5
"Is origami hard?" we ask. It is, that's just the start;
Is it science or technology, or merely crafty art?
But my question is can you tell the Kawasakis apart?

Verse 6
Ku:
Can you help me with design? Have a new model I can see?
Are there diagrams online? Can I distribute them for free?

Lang:
Jason, I'm singing; ask Joseph Wu don't bother me!!

That was just the start of the entertainment. Erik showed us all the "Heckler Video" which I will not spoil in case he decides to let me have the video :) he then went onstage to do magic tricks. He got a few volunteers on stage too (Satoshi, Patsy and Jason) and did some math magic trick where you wind some rope on their arms using some special algorithm such that if any arm is taken out, the rope falls to the ground. Then there was another video where Martin Demaine was inside a huge die (cubic random number generator) and Erik was rolling him around.

Looking at all the crazy things origami people do, it just makes me want to become a part of them :)

End of day 1!

Day 2: Thursday, 15 July, SMU School of Accountancy

The keynote lecture seemed a bit rushed for time, with Robert was going through the slides rather quickly, so unfortunately I didn't really like it. It seems that he'll be giving the same lecture at NUS, 19 July, 3-4pm, NUS University Hall Auditorium Level 2, University Hall, Lee Kong Chian Wing.

The other lectures began.

Universal Hinge Patterns to fold Orthogonal Shapes (Nadia M. Benbernou, Erik & Martin Demaine, Aviv Ovadya)
The authors present an algorithm to fold any polycube, or a solid composed of cubes sharing common faces. A program was written to implement the algorithm and generate a crease pattern (my "building block method" was kind of a rougher version of this result). Apparently the crease patterns involved in the building block method had been discovered in 1978 :) The authors also investigated the efficiency of the algorithm.

A General Method of Drawing Biplanar Crease Patterns (Cheng Herng Yi)
The author presents an algorithm to fold any convex biplanar, or a polyhedron with all its vertices lying among two planes. A program was written to generate a crease pattern automatically based on the algorithm, and its relation to a form of complex grafting (folding a pattern on the paper and treating it as a flat piece of paper and folding it into another model so the pattern appears on the model) is described.

A Design Method for Axial Symmetrical Curved Origami with Triangular Prism Protrusions (Jun Mitani)
The author wrote a program to generate the crease pattern that folds into any type of solid with rotational symmetry of order n about a central axis, where n is finite. The resultant solid has protrusions sticking out of the sides.

During the break, Aviv and I discussed extensively about our presentations and we compared our programs; I'm sad to say that my program still has bugs :( He said that I'd been spoiled because the only programming language I know is Haskell, which is so perfect :)

Rigid-Foldable Thick Origami (Tomohiro Tachi)
A crease pattern is rigid-foldable is, in every step of its folding process, the paper is neither stretched, bent nor compressed, and no additional creases are itnroduced. The Miura Map Fold is one example. The axiomatic folding of paper always assumes that it is flat, but the author introduces the dimension of thickness, which has more application in real-life technology. He discusses various hinges between the plates that form the "paper" to be folded, such that rigid folding of plates with some thickness is possible. He tested the idea out in an architectural design that connects two skyscrapers (like a walkway between two towers) that is flexible (it can fold around rigidly).

Folding Origami by Cell Forces (Kaori Kuribayashi, Hiroaki Onoe and Shoji Takeuchi)
Micron-scale plates are stuck close together on a flat surface. Cells are cultured near the gaps between the plates so they "bridge" the plates; the cells' traction force pulls upward on the plates. When the plates are detached from the surface, the cells are allowed to pull the plates up and fold them into the shape dictated by the plates. The authors made really cool videos of the cells folding up the net of a dodecahedron, folding a long chain of squares into a helix and many more.

Growing the cells

Dodecahedron!

Such a folding method places the cells into a 3D environment that could be useful for culturing artificial organs or transporting drugs.

By the way, Kuribayashi was part of the team in Tokyo University who created this metal cylinder (stent) that could be shrunken by folding along a crease pattern based on the waterbomb base, then inserted into damaged blood vessels, where it unfolds in response to the increase in temperature and supports the damaged area.

Folding any Orthogonal Maze (Erik & Martin Demaine and Jason Ku)
The authors presented a general gadget that, when combined together, can fold any orthogonal maze efficiently (linear time). Sorry, somehow I just can't remember much from this lecture...

Folding Simulation of Non-Zero Gaussian Curvature by Mountain and Valley Intrinsic Straight and Curved Creases (Leong Cheng Chit)
The author studies how the use of couplets, a pair of a straight mountain and curved valley, to approximate curved surfaces. The author demonstrated how couplets could be used to fold vases (rotational symmetry about an axis) and their usage in other areas of origami design. The author also touched on how the curved valley for an arbitrary vase could be plotted using mathematics.

Reconstructing David Huffman's Legacy in Curved-Crease Origami (Erik & Martin Demaine and Duks Koschitz)
David Huffman is best known for discovering (in a term paper for grad school) "Huffman Codes" which are extremely widely used in computer science. It is, however, much less known that he was a pioneer in using curved creases in origami, partly because he hardly ever published any of his work. As he has passed on, the authors are working with the Huffman family to reconstruct his works and decipher his mathematical findings.

The cell folding lecture was easily one of my favourite lectures :) The author said that she would probably post the videos on youtube after publishing her work.

Day 3: Friday, 16 July, SMU School of Business
The start of the convention! I finally met the rest of the NUS High students who would be attending the convention, and I directed them to the exhibition. I also saw Steven Wong, a Malaysian origamist who I got to know through his blog and chatted over MSN for a few years who brought 3 friends over from Malaysia to attend the convention. Here's a picture of he and his friends + Joseph Wu + me:

I then got the diagrams for Jason Ku's fairy and followed them until 10 am, when the classes started. I went to Joseph Wu's class, where he taught us how to fold a Salmon.

The people who I know in the photo are (from left) Winnie from Australia, Curtis Choy from Singapore, James Peake, Koichi Tateishi and Chan Yew Meng. Koichi is rather proficient at English and is currently in the process of translating many books, including one by Eric Joisel and another by Kamiya Satoshi. Yew Meng is from Origami Singapore, and he is in charge of taking lots of photos and giving the photos to us eventually in a disc.

The salmon took the whole of the morning, and I had lunch with some of the Origami Singapore people, Robert Lang and Jason Ku. The last two shared 4 (?) fried dumplings, 2 huge meat buns and some siew mai, strangest lunch I've seen. Robert and I discussed a bit about Tomohiro Tachi's rigid-foldable thick origami, and I also suggested that since 6OSME would be held in Japan, it should be held near the location and date of the annual Origami Tanteidan convention so conference attendees could get more out of their trip to Japan by going to both.

The Demaines returned from their lunch with Cheng Chit, and somehow they, together with Aviv, Jason, Tachi and I ended up in one of the unlocked rooms and started a "brainstorming session". Strangely, Robert popped in for a bit and got a piece of paper, but I didn't pay much attention to what he was doing and he left later. Since much of our work was similar or related, we were thinking of how we could combine our ideas and generalize them. Quite a few possible generalizations were suggested, and the session which lasted so long that I skipped all my afternoon workshops ended satisfactorily. We agreed to continue to keep in touch through a mailing list so we can send each other ideas.

Another very interesting thing that happened that day was when Jason decided to have dinner with Robert Lang and the Demaines at an Indian restaurant. I decided to join him, and by the time we got there about 20 other people had decided to join us too :) We sat along 7-8 tables connected in a long chain and I had the best meal in my life. Let's talk about the food first:

Large loveletter-shaped crispy biscuits (???) with slightly spicy tomato puree and mint spices (?)
Salad + a huge prawn + some fish + a big button mushroom stuffed with potatos and spices
Warm and crispy Naan bread with fish curry, chicken curry, lentil curry, curry potatoes, saffron rice, some mushroom puree thing and an antidote for spiciness.
Watermelon and ginger juice
Mango-flavoured ice cream

Items 2 and 4

Item 3

Everything was just soooo nice and just at my threshold for spiciness, so I really enjoyed the meal, I ate like 4 of the Naan bread stuffed with the various fillings provided.

The conversation was also great; to my right, Joseph, Tachi and Andrew Hudson were discussing about how bad some professors could be at teaching, and there was a quite lengthy discussion between Joseph and Tachi about Japanese politics. Joseph also mentions molecular gastronomists, who are culinary artists who experiment with chemicals to create artificial tastes. Apparently, their food is expensive but tastes very, very nice. An example is a tiny cube of gelatin served a huge platter; when you rest the cube on your tongue, you experience the taste of pizza.

Martin also came over to tell us about a few among his collection of the ways MIT students get free meals (nothing too honorable ^_^) and how to make people think one is smart in MIT (e.g. walk casually past a room and glance at the whiteboard, then remark that there's a small mistake but it won't be much of a problem and leave).

Since Erik and Martin were leaving Singapore early the next morning, we bid them farewell at the end of the dinner; I meant it when I told Erik that our meeting had gone better than anything I'd hoped for, especially the brainstorming session. What a great dinner, I felt so much closer to everyone in that room after it!

Day 5: Saturday, 17 July, SMU School of Business
I arrived at 8.30 am, and Boon told me to leave my bags in Kamiya Satoshi's class 1.5 hours early to reserve places. I'm glad I followed his advice, because by 9 am almost all of the seats were taken. I folded the box (see the previous post) that I would be teaching later in the afternoon to prepare for the workshop and while away time.

The class was really packed full by the time Kamiya entered, and he distributed the diagrams for his Raccoon Dog (or "Tanuki" would be more familiar to those who watch anime). It was fairly complicated, but I was able to finish it and shape it to my content. Jason and Wil Chua popped in to take the diagrams and paper too.

Lunch was at the hawker center downstairs, and I met up with all the NUS High students who came and we watched Between the Folds together. I'm glad that everyone in the room paid attention and didn't scoff at the slow-paced moments :) After the documentary, a Singaporean teacher asked if I could teach my Simple Box early; I agreed, and a few NUS High students joined in too. I told them that ironically, the inspiration for the box came from a japanese book on modular boxes written by Tomoko Fuse, and when I went to the National Library to search for Advanced Origami, I flipped open a book titled "The Origami Artist's Bible" out of curiosity and I saw the diagrams for an identical box, created by Tomoko Fuse. The rest of the day wasn't that interesting, I said my farewells and left 5OSME, and I got Aviv's MSN contact so we can still keep in touch.

I can't wait for 6OSME in Japan!!! I love this community, and I'm very grateful that I seem to have been accepted into it. The dinner really bonded me to them, and i love their easygoing attitude and crazy antics (Conference Banquet). Of course, I look forward to working with Erik, Martin, Aviv, Jason and Tachi!

Too bad Thomas Hull wasn't here, I wanted to ask him how origami is related to abstract algebra :)

Origami as Pure as Snow
Shonen

Black and Silver

2010-05-29T22:33:00.002+08:00

Right now I'm rushing to finish the diagrams for my box so I can submit it to the 5OSME Diagram Book asap, so I refolded the model with black paper and silver foil, and the result turned out pretty nicely. First up is a cubic box:

The lid for this box is actually just another box with half the height, only a little bigger so it can fit on top.

Here's what they look like together:

I really love this color combination, maybe I'll try black and gold next time :)

By the way, I know I noticed this a little late, but the program for the Conference part of 5OSME is out, along with the abstracts for all presentations; check it out here. I'm presenting in Mathematics 3, "Folding Prismatoids with 3D Origami". ^_^

Origami as Pure as Snow
Shonen

Between The Folds

2010-04-18T16:19:00.002+08:00

The origami documentary "Between The Folds" is now available for online viewing! Just click here to view it at the PBS Website. PBS might change the documentary, so please try to catch it as soon as possible!

\edit{Unfortunately, the documentary has been removed from the official website, so now you have to watch it at 5OSME or find its DVD in a bookstore.}

I've really learned a lot from watching it, like how artistic origami can be, and the deep relation between origami and math and the sciences. You really should watch it! I made a friend of mine spontaneously interested in origami after he watched it.

A couple of pictures that I really liked from the documentary, featuring the expressiveness of origami:

Go on, watch it! :)

5OSME, Here I Come!

2010-02-13T21:00:00.002+08:00

Hi guys!

These past few months, I haven't been folding much because of school work (yes, even in the holidays!!!!), so I've only used this blog for 5OSME publicity and related materials. However, this time I'm posting about a creation of mine.

I'll be presenting my origami and math project at 5OSME! ^_^ This being a golden opportunity, I had to make it count. A month ago, I diagrammed by House (scroll down) to submit it to the 5OSME diagram book, where it might be published. Since the diagram needed a nice picture of the finished model, I refolded my House, planning the crease carefully to minimize unneeded lines on the model, instead of precreasing the full grid.

Unfortunately, I used too much water when wet-folding, resulting in a less-than-perfect appearance, but it's good enough :)

I also thought of a possible technique in wet-folding: to prevent the body of the house from opening up due to the many pleats hidden between the "walls" of the house, I bound the body by wrapping a fat strip of paper around the walls tightly, squeezing the walls together while they were wet, then taping the strip shut. When the house dried I removed the strip and the walls closed together nicely.

A few things I learnt NOT to do while wetfolding:

(a) Don't use too much water - unsupported regions in the model will sag downwards and their creases will lose their sharpness

(b) Don't use clips on wet paper - there will be marks when the paper is dry!!!!

Anyway, after the folding instructions in my diagram, I decided to add a small section called "Notes on Possible Variations", where I explained the advantage of folding models from the center of the paper: the models can be stacked on flat surfaces of another model. The house itself was formed by stacking a roof and door, both folded from the center of the paper, on two flat sides of a cuboid, which formed the body of the house. To demonstrate the power of this advantage, I decided to combine the house with another model. Initially, I decided to put the house on the shell of a hermit crab, but the paper became too thick to fold; eventually, I folded a house on the back of a turtle:

Rising Standards of Living

When the real estate bubble burst, even a turtle could buy a house.

Folded with Thai Silk Paper glued onto kitchen foil

It's basically a house stacked on a turtle's flat shell. The turtle was the "Sea Turtle" from Michael Lafosse's "Advanced Origami". It's on the top-right corner of the book cover:

I'll try to submit that model for the exhibition as well ^_^

I can't wait for 5OSME!

Origami as Pure as Snow
Shonen

Paper Art

2010-01-18T18:11:00.001+08:00

This post isn't exactly about origami; here's a link to "100 Extraordinary Examples of Paper Art". Although it's not origami, it's amazing enough :)

Robert Lang on TED

2009-12-03T14:05:00.000+08:00

Hi guys!

Click here to watch a video of Robert Lang giving a presentation at TED. He talks about how math can be applied in origami and how origami can be applied everywhere, so it can probably serve as an appetizer for 5OSME. TED has really good videos, which are of course not restricted to origami; there are lots of "ideas worth spreading" there. For another nice TED video, click here.

Red Alert!

2009-10-17T21:44:00.004+08:00

For all those who want details for 5OSME, please check this website. Calling all Singaporeans, this is a rare and priceless chance for us to learn about origami and expand out horizons, so we'd better not miss it!

NMOS Booth Exhibit

2009-08-22T23:16:00.007+08:00

Earlier today, I was presenting at the National Mathematical Olympiad of Singapore (NMOS) Finals, and after that I set up a booth at my school's concourse to showcase the origami models from my project "Folding Prismatoids with 3-D Origami". The visitors included the participants of NMOS (Primary School students) and their parents and teachers. Some of the parents and teachers asked me where they could find the pictures of my exhibits, so I have created a Flickr account to house those pictures. Click here to view the photos.

The Prosperity model is featured in an earlier post, here. For visitors who got my blog URL today, please feel free to look around the blog and see the previous posts or leave comments!

To the readers of this blog, you may want to look at Carlos Natan's Flickr account. The work I did in my project is surprisingly similar to what he has been doing, but we focus on different aspects of the same thing; I'm trying to generalise to all sorts of shapes, while he does beautiful variations of prisms. If you like my work, see his too!

Here I wish to highlight two posts. The previous post (here) features Joel Cooper, an American origami folder who folds tesselations and masks. Sounds dull? Check this slideshow! Now that's cool origami. No cuts, one piece of paper - you can still get lots of stunning variation from it, and that's one of the joys of doing purist origami.

The second post is the post before the one about Joel Cooper, and it's about the upcoming 5OSME, or 5th Origami for Science, Mathematics and Education Convention which will be held in Singapore. Details are here in the post. The trailer in that post is a must-see!!

Joel Cooper

2009-07-04T15:37:00.004+08:00

Please follow this link to Joel Cooper's blog, and this for an awesome slideshow.

Yes, when I first saw those, I went speechless too ^_^

He does tesselations and pops faces and other shapes out of them. I used to think it's almost impossible to make complicated curved surfaces in origami, but there you go :)

5th International Conference on Origami in Science, Mathematics and Education

2009-06-04T22:09:00.010+08:00

Now I know what the full name of "5OSME" is.

As readers of this blog will know, i'm part of an informal group of Origami folders in Singapore, called (surprise surprise) Origami Singapore. Next July, the group is going to organize 5OSME, which is something something "Origami for Science, Mathematics and Education". It's going to be an awesome event with seminars where people present papers on the relation between origami and science and stuff like that, a free public exhibition and origami classes! For the program of the last convention, 4OSME, click here.

What I'll be anticipating as well is the screening of Between The Folds, an origami documentary! It's about origami and science and art, and from the trailer below you can already see that the documentary is gonna be good stuff.

I'll post about definite details for 5OSME when I can, so please support the event next July! ^_^

Origami as Pure as Snow
Shonen

Revival

2009-04-18T21:30:00.003+08:00

Long time no see! I just realised that my blog died on September 11 2008.

The purpose of this post is to highlight what's gone on after my blog died, and the thing that kept me busy throughout the holidays...

First, my exams ended, and there were post-exam activities. One afternoon after such an activity, a math teacher suggested to me to do a math project on origami. I was quite ready at that time because I knew a lot of results I had (my "building block method") and could extend for the project. I started on it in mid-November, and burnt my holidays away working on a report in almost all of my free time, but it was all worth it. I finished a 49-page and over 11,000-word report for my project "Folding Prismatoids Using a Form of 3-D Origami". What my project did was to investigate how to use geometrical constructs (e.g. perpendicular lines, midpoints) to draw lines on paper, i.e. draw a crease pattern with black mountain folds and red valley folds etc. such that when the crease pattern is folded it becomes a 3-D Prismatoid sticking out of the paper. It all started with the cuboid Building Blocks, which I extended to Convex Prisms (check out the Prismatoid link!), Concave Prisms, Convex Frusta, Concave Frusta, Convex Pyramids, Wedges and Convex Cupolas. Because my methods needed a special form of net of the final solid as a basis, my report also included a way for users to generate those nets of a random shape even if they don't know how it looks like in real life.

My project was submitted to the Singapore Mathematics Project Festival 2009 (SMPF), and it proudly won the Gold medal (2nd Place) and the Creativity and Originality Prize! Check the results here (Senior Section). I might also be publishing a shorter version of my report in the Mathematical Medley, a biannual publication of the Singapore Mathematical Society.

The next things that happened were that the same math teacher again gave me two opportunities: setting up a booth during my school's annual Speech Day, and conducting a June workshop for gifted primary school students, both of which I accepted eagerly.

First up was Speech Day. I rallied together my Origami models (half of which you can find in this blog and the rest created during my SMPF project), wiped off the dust and boxed them up for transport to school. I also created a summarised version of my SMPF finals presentation slides for use at the booth. On Speech Day itself, the principal mentioned my project as one of the achievements our students have made so far. The guest of honour, Lim Chuan Poh, chairman of A*STAR, then came to visit all the booths that were set up in the school concourse. He was quite impressed with my project, and he also requested to take back one of my models with him. He knew how to pick, he took my Concave Prism, one of the hardest to make!! ^_^

After Speech Day, the same math teacher again suggested that I could set up the same booth for the school's Open House. I accepted happily again, and set up my booth (with the same models from Speech Day) again today at school. Lots of parents came and asked me about my project, and I explained to each one of them the gist of the project. What I said to each of them was something like this:

(opens up one of the models) "See the lines on the paper? The main purpose of this project was to investigate how to draw the correct lines on any piece of paper so after folding it becomes a 3-D solid sticking out of the paper." (Folds the model again) "I created many methods to do so and produced many different shapes as well." (Points to other models in my project)
(Points to other "Building Block" models) "These are special cases of my methods because Their folds align with a square grid. This is an easier case, so I can manipulate it more easily to get more complicated products."
(Parent Q & A)

I manned the booth for about 5 hours!!! So tiring hahaha

That's it! The next event coming up is the June workshop, hope it will be a success! ^_^

Green Origami

2008-09-11T20:51:00.014+08:00

In Math (Trigo) class, my teacher was giving out these mint chocolates to the class, and after I finished eating mine I realized that I had quite a nice bit of foil-backed paper right in front of me. I just had to hide the plastic edges and I had a nice long rectangular piece of folding material. After fiddling a bit with it, pleating it and making random reverse folds, I thought that maybe I could make an arm with fingers out of it. It's a rather basic skill, used rather commonly in boxpleating to form hands with recognisable fingers. I'm not gonna go too deeply into it, but I think you should be able to reverse-engineer it from the pictures anyway.

And the underside...

Should be quite clear now ^_^

Then, I saw the wrapper left on the table by my neighbour and I was still bored, so I took it and folded another hand so I now have a matching set (With the thumbs in the right place, of course). Then I got hold of another few wrappers and started folding legs.

A view of the foot from its owner's perspective (i.e. looking downwards):

By the way, I've finished off all the dark-coloured paper I have, so I had to use my Year One Orientation T-shirt to provide the black background. I did that witht he last post too. (:

I quickly made a matching set of legs again, and I started having fun placing the "emo frog parts" into interesting arrangements.

The part providing the "body" and "head" is actually a sample of the original sweet. Mint Chocloates yum ^_^

Someone remarked that when viewed at an angle, it kinda looks like someone in a traffic accident.

Ouch.

In case you're wondering, the book I used was a copy of Hikaru No Go manga.

That was fun, random doodles in class are always the best ^_^

These techniques are always useful, so it's good to rememeber them.

Ta-ta!

Origami as Pure as Snow
Shonen

Origami Cards

2008-08-10T20:36:00.023+08:00

Sorry sorry sorry sorry for killing this blog for two months, I've been really busy and tired all this time... forgive me forgive me T_T

I hope not many people stopped visiting this blog because of the lack of activity...

I shall do a post stuffed with pictures to make up for it ^_^

First up is a random doodle that I did during Biology class because I was too bored.

I made it out of an envelope I found in class:

You might be able to see how I folded it now =D

Next up is a folded version of the 202 class logo created by tiong suan.

Please don't kill me if it looks crappy, because 1) I was bored and tired at that time 2) This was a prototype that I did with printing paper 3) 30% of my mind was on the Beijing Olympics Opening

The following are the most important; remember the building blocks? Well, instead of using a boring square grid, why not use an equilateral triangle grid instead? I came up with a hexagonal and triangular building block...

and this is what they look like from the flipside...

Warning: the previous picture might prove to be misleading if you use it to try and figure out the folding method.

The above models can function like building blocks; their dimensions can be varied to a certain extent.

Surprisingly, I also managed to fold a little tetrahedron sticking out of the paper.

The flipside...

Mysteriously, this picture always turned out rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise when I tried to upload it on blogger. The problem was solved when I rotated the picture file myself one whole round then trying again.

Its negative version...

... and its flipside.

Finally, here's a cool model that I did during the Origami Singapore meetup today

Cool, eh?

Hmmm I might post CPs some other day... *yawn*

seeya~

Origami as Pure as Snow
Shonen

Cross Grave - Variations

2008-05-21T21:00:00.007+08:00

Hi everyone!

Following my Cross Grave post, Cupcake, another folder, did a variation on the cross model that turned out very well. ^_^ He kindly allowed me to show you guys his model, which changes the dimensions of the original cross (7 x 5) to a smaller one (4 x 3). The model become smaller and easier to fold, but most importantly, it shows how a versatile folder can change a design if he plans it well enough.

Click here to see cupcake's model in his flickr account (I had the picture but somehow it doesn't show up)

Very nicely done! Judging from the picture, I thought he used a 15 x 15 grid for this model (but he told me that it was really 16 x 16 ^_^) ; a very interesting feature of this type of "pop-out" origami is that any square grid can be used. Theoretically, the paper can be extended without bound on all four sides, but the model, jutting out from the centre and thus not needing the edges and corners, will remain intact. This is what gives "pop-out" origami an unlimited (at least, in my opinion) potential for the combination of models.

Now for a little exercise: how many squares does this cross take up from the paper? Try it out if you're interested!

As to how Cupcake managed to make his cross, it probably went something like this: please refer to the pictures in my last post, and scroll down to the second picture from the top. In that step, instead of forming two 2 x 1 x 1 building blocks each two squares away from the central square, he folded two 1 x 1 x 1 building blocks each one square away from the central square.
He then proceeded on with the rest of the steps until his cross reached a certain height. Folders may want to try this model out, and more adventurous ones (with very thin paper available) may want to extend the method to make a cross with dimensions 10 x 7! (figure out how I arrived at those two magical figures yourself ^_^)

I hope this post has managed to convince you guys that it is possible to create variations of models with enough planning! Then again, if any of you guys have folded any of my models, please let me know, and I may feature it on this blog!

Thank you very much Cupcake for folding my models! ^_^

Origami as Pure as Snow
Shonen

Cross Grave

2008-05-19T00:59:00.001+08:00

My second post in a month!! Cheers guys! Thanks for your support! =D
D.Gray-man rocks more than Bleach now ^_^

I mentioned in the last post that knowing how to superimpose or combine sub-models to form new designs is very important. The model that will be shown in this post is formed by a combination of building blocks of various dimensions and placed strategically around the model to give the planned end result.

Behold, the Cross!

Dang, somehow I just can't get the lighting right ^_^

Next, I'll be showing pictorial instructions to making this model, but you have to be familiar with how to make building blocks of varying dimensions. Here's a little tip to help you control the height of a building block: create a buidling block of height 1, then treat the paper as though it were flat and form an identical building block at exactly the same spot using the same creases. Keep repeating this step and eventually the building block will reach the desired height.

The italicized sentence is extremely important in the combination of sub-models; experienced folders in this form of "pop-out" origami can skip it, but the technique described in the sentence can help beginners to combine sub-models efficiently.

Start with a 32 x 32 grid. Choose a central square which will eventually become the square on the highest point on the cross (refer to the previous photo). As there is no central square (the grid size is even), choose one that is as central as it can be. Next, form 2 identical 2 x 1 x 1 building blocks such that they are on opposite sides of the central square and there are two squares between the central square and each of the building blocks (as to how the dimensions of the building block are to be interpreted, refer to my last post). The result so far:

Next, treat the paper as if it were flat and construct a 1 x 1 x 1 building block whose topmost surface is the central square. As we are treating the paper as if it were flat, do not be disturbed by any places which are thicker when folding.

At this stage, it should look something like this:

Treating the paper as if it were flat, form another 1 x 1 x 1 building block at the exact same spot.

You'd be wondering what these three prongs are for, but you'll see in the next step!

Do that step yet again, i.e. treating the paper as if it were flat, form another 1 x 1 x 1 building block at the exact same spot.

See now? ^_^

The disadvantage of treating the paper as if it were flat is that the paper is not flat, and the layers build up and prove to be a nuisance sometimes, as in this case, where the paper is so thick that I cannot press the layers down flat into the required shape for fear of damaging the structure.

The remaining steps are just performing the previous step again...

... and again and again until the cross reaches a height of your choice. I felt that a height of 7 was the best in this case, but the height can be varied to your wishes.

This is what the paper looked like once I finished folding. My friends from Origami Singapore had recommended "Elephanthide Paper" to me, but true to its name, it refused to submit to creases easily... In this model, the paper near the "joints" puffed up like a spring because of extra thickness there, and the extra paper at the base also piled up because of all the layers of paper accumulated there. Only one way to sort things out... wet-folding!

I restrained the puffed-up parts with rubber bands (I just had to run out of them at that critical moment) and put the cross under the tap for a few seconds, shook off the extra water and laid it on the floor to dry with heavy books (thank goodness for the World Book series) pinning down all those layers at the edges. I left the entire set-up overnight, and removed the rubber bands in the morning to get the final result.

A picture of my valiant efforts to subdue the thickness of paper:

Now for an explanation for the title of this post; Firstly, my parents thought of a tombstone the moment they saw this model (which was a little disappointing T_T), and "Cross Grave" appears in D.Gray-man!

As mark of my new anime affiliation, I will end off this post in a new way...

Origami as Pure as Snow
Shonen

(My eternal thanks to the creator of this excellent picture! ^_^)

有口福

2008-05-07T11:48:00.000+08:00

My sincere apologies for the over-one-month gap between posts. Because of my exams, I haven't been able to fold much... Well, its the June Holidays, so I might be able to post a lot more often than usual from now on! Thank you so much for supporting this blog, even though my posts have been rather scarce! *bows* ^_^

Now, to business! Remember my last post which taught you how to fold a "Negative Building Block"? (suggestions for its name are very welcome... heheh) Well, these little sub-models are rather useless unless you can incorporate them into a new design. If you refer back to the model in "Pop-out Prosperity", you'll see that the negative building block is not used on its own in the model; instead, it is used in conjunction with the Building Block to create a "well" structure. One example of such a structure is the "口" radical in the Pop-out Prosperity model; This post will show you how to convert a negative building block into that structure.

Firstly, you have to create a negative building block.

For details on how to fold a negative buidling block, refer to my last post.

I used a 15 x 15 grid for this model instead of the 9 x 9 one used in my last post, because I needed more space to fold the "well structure" than the negative building block itself. This gives a little insight on how paper is sucked up two-dimensionally while we try to build "upwards"... I call it "The Law of Conservation of Paper" - In an isolated model, the amount of paper present is always constant. ^_^

Anyway, for the next step, treat the model at the current step as flat paper (i.e. disregard the presence of the little hole in the center of the model). This step seems to be crucial in the superimposing of certain sub-models in this form of origami. Form a 1 x 3 x 3 building block with the hole at its center.

Before we continue, I feel that we should set down a standard way of referring to the dimensions of a building block so it is easier to refer to.

A building block with dimensions x x y x z has height x, length y and breadth z.
(For problems in the direction of y and z, I will clarify in a future post.)

A view of the model in the current stage:

And you're done! My, that was fast, wasn't it? Let's take a closer look at the "well structure" in the middle:

Now, you can see that the center part of the model corresponds to the "口" radical in the Pop-out Prosperity model.

The superimposing of sub-models does give you interesting results; the important thing is to know which sub-models to use and how to merge them to form a new model.

Now for a view of the underside of the model:

Compare this to the flip-sides of the Pop-out Prosperity model and the Negative Building Block; curious folders may also want to fold a 1 x 3 x 3 building block on a separate piece of paper and compare its reverse side to the picture above.

We're done with the model, but there's one more technique to show you that will help in folding this form of origami. How do we measure how much space the model takes up? Remember that what makes this form of origami unique is that the paper around the model can be extended without bound without affecting the model (because the model itself "pops out" of the paper and does not require edges and corners) and the extended portion can be used to fit in more models so long as the models do not interfere with one another. Hence, it is important for a folder to measure the amount of space his or her model takes up so he or she knows whether another model can be fitted in, or what grid size he or she should use. The space the model takes up is measured in terms of the two-dimensional area on the paper which the model takes up, as opposed to the three-dimensional notation of a building block.

Because of the sucking up of paper inside the model, it is rather impossible to gauge the number of squares it takes up by counting from the inside. However, we can use another approach; counting from the outside! If you've folded the model already, measure the distance from any edge of the paper to one side of the model in terms of the number of squares (in this case, 4) . Do the same for the opposite side (4 again) , and add the distances together (4 + 4 = 8) . subtract that total distance from the grid size (in this case, 15, because a 15 x 15 grid was used) to get the number of squares the model takes up in that dimension (15 - 8 = 7). Repeat for the other dimension (7 again). Thus, in this case, the dimensions of the model is 7 x 7.

Theoretically, a 7 x 7 grid can be used to fold this model; yes, it can be done, all the features of the model will be inside, but the edges of the model will not be locked vertically, and the thickness of the paper will force it to open up a little, resulting in the model not looking very nice. The edges of the model depend on the flat paper surrounding it for locking, so it is best to give a bit of leeway, like a 10 x 10 grid or more ( a 9 x 9 grid would not give enough locking for stiffer paper) .

Ahhh... a long post! I hope that you have enjoyed this post, and thanks for the support!

The next post will be really cool, I'm smoothing out the details for it now, it won't be long!
I'll be cross if you don't come back for the next post! ^_^

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Terror Pit!

2008-03-26T21:41:00.000+08:00

Okay folks!

Once again, I apologise for the really long gap between posts, this year's been hectic... T_T
In this posts and probably subsequent ones, I'll be elaborating more on the techniques used to create the maze and chinese characters. Hope you all will be satisfied by this post even after the long wait! =)

As most of you will probably have realised, there seems to be an extra feature in the Pop-Out Prosperity that hasn't appeared before; a series of holes. In previous posts, I've shown you all how to make Building Blocks that pop out of the paper, and in this post, I'll explain how to make a sinking portion in the paper, which, for want of a better name, will be called a "Negative Building Block". Hahah, I really need suggestions for the name. =)

This model was done on what could be said as a 9 x 9 grid, but with only a few creases from the grid.

The product is the cube-shaped hole in the center. Of course, the paper protrudes out from the other side, looking like this:

At least the extra paper could be neatly packed into 90-degree angles... ^_^

If you've tried making the Building Block before, you'll realise that you can't create a hole by simply reversing all the creases or flipping the paper over, because there are extra bits of paper that stick out and partially cover the hole, which does contribute much to the neatness of the model. In the Building Block, all the extra paper is stashed away into the hollow space inside the block, hiding it from the viewer. However, in the Negative Building Block, that extra paper has to go outside the hollow space as now the hollow space is the one being viewed. This leads to a drastically different crease pattern as shown below:

See the difference?

This time, I stopped being lazy and added in all the creases that ended up in the final product. However, be warned as the creases may get a little confusing; try and figure out which creases are merely two layers folded together to produce reflections!

Just like the Building Block, the dimentions for the Negative Building Block can be modified by changing the length of the sides of the small square in the centre of the CP.

Folders are encouraged to figure out how the 田 part in the Pop-Out Prosperity was created! All you need to know is how Building Blocks and Negative Building Blocks are made.

Have fun!
I'll try very hard to post as often as I can now!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Pop-out Prosperity

2008-02-08T08:26:00.000+08:00

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

As promised, here's my CNY post!

In the last Origami Singapore meet-up, some of us folded Eric Joisel's Rat model and compared them around. Eileen wanted to do a variation on it, and suggested to me (since I could fold a design that "popped out" from the paper) that I fold a rat in a maze, all popping out of the paper.

The first step in trying to make the model was, of course, learning how to fold a maze first.

In the meeting itself Eileen and I experimented around and tried to figure out a method to fold a series of solid walls that could bend around and connect to form a real maze. We found one, but I realised later that it would not work very well. I tried again at home and finally got a method to do the job; I'll be posting about the method in subsequent posts.

Another idea I had during the meet-up was that instead of using the "walls" to form a maze, why shouldn't I use it to form words? Chinese New Year was coming, and I should be trying something big...

I did a lot of planning and after one prototype, ta-daa...

Pop-out prosperity!

As my method currently can only deal with 90-degree angles, the Simplified Chinese character "福" would have been impossible to fold. Hence, I chose the Traditional Chinese character with a "示" radical.

This model was done on a 32 x 32 grid.

To show the three-dimensionality of the model, here's another picture:

It's a little uneven, but nothing's perfect. (:

From here you can see that I've solved the problem of making a maze.

The CP for this model is a little complicated, so it will take a while for me to create it, if I can summon up the energy to do it.

I'm gonna try out more chinese characters in the future! Guess what I'll be posting on Valentine's Day...

Once again, Happy Chinese New Year, and may this year be full of prosperity!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

A Die with 20 Faces?

2008-01-31T10:49:00.000+08:00

I'm posting this to ensure that this blog does not become worse than a monthly newsletter... :)

Almost two months ago, I went overseas to Qingdao in Shandong, China for this educational trip in one of Qingdao's top secondary schools. I was supposed to observe classes in Qingdao No.39 Middle School, and I was grouped with a student from the above school to act as a guide. After a few days, when I had to leave, I wanted to give a farewell present to him. I did not want to buy a gift for him (It might seem insincere) so I decided to fold him an origami model.

I learned that he was very interested in and talented in Mathematics, so I decided to fold him a geometrical figure, the more complicated the better. The one I thought appropriate was a regular Icosahedron, so I had to create one as fast as possible.

I managed one without much difficulty (heheh):

Not bad!
I made this model from the leftovers from the paper used to make the House shown in the exhibition at Clementi.

If you see the following diagrams, you will see that the model is mainly a tube with two closed ends. Take note that I've decided to go step by step in showing the folding method, so each of the following diagrams will be accompanied by a short explanation.

This CP lies on a 60-degree grid.

The grey area is a portion of the paper that overlaps, sealing up the gap in the "tube" formed by wrapping the paper around. Note that all the creases in the grey area are identical to those on the extreme left. The grey area can be extended or even shortened, but bear in mind the difficulties that may occur.

After finishing the above CP, the model will look something like this:

This figure has 30 sides, which is cool, but not so much as the Icosahedron.

You'll realise that the ends (far left and far right in the photo) of the figure are not very effeciently closed (in fact, the model I gave to my "buddy" had this problem and it needed two fingers to hold the ends shut, the sealing method came recently), and they open up by themselves easily. Later on in the explanation I'll be showing how to seal up the ends completely.

Now open the model up and fold the following CP:

Brace youself for the twist!
Do take note that the long horizontal crease in the middle has changed from black to red.

By doing the twist, you eliminate the 10 extra sides by compressing them into a "cap" structure, also giving the model its proper shape. The twist also serves to lock the overlapping areas together. This is the hardest step in the model, the rest is all easy!

The flaps that protrude inwards do not lie flat; According to the CP, you will have to bend them slightly upwards.

Now, the model will look like this:

As you can see, the shape of the Icosahedron is coming out.
Now for a zoom-in on the "cap":

The ends of the model here seem to be pretty well sealed, don't they? That's one of the functions of the cap; it bends upwards and flattens the paper in between the ends, making them inseparable.

With a heavy heart, unfold the model again and fold the following CP:

The horizontal crease has changed back to black.

The main step here is to lock the flaps in the lower end shut. Important: The locking of the overlapped areas happen as if there was only 1 layer.

This is what the locking of 1 flap will look like:

And this is what the lower end looks like from the inside after the locking of all 5 flaps (the overlapping area is counted as 1 flap).

The upper-right corner of the photo shows the overlapping area of the model.

You do not have to unfold the model again.

The last step is to do the twist and close the end of the tube. The flaps from the upper ends are carefully slotted in so they are locked by the upward-bending flaps of the twist.

All that's left now is to fold the upper half of the CP. The horizontal crease has turned back to red.

The end result:

An Icosahedron with neatly-closed ends!

This is the third creation of mine involving a 60-degreee grid, I'll be posting one of them sometime soon.

Oh, and keep an eye out for my Chinese New Year Post, it's gonna be great!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Timcanpy v.1.0

2007-12-25T15:49:00.001+08:00

Merry Christmas guys!

Recently, I've started watching the anime D.Gray-man, a supernatural anime which is still being released from Japan. Of course, I've been longing to fold something from the anime, so I set my eyes on the golem Timcampy, which looks something like this. However, it turned out to be a little hard, so I aimed at something easier, a little golden ball with wings.

Well, most of the trouble came with the ball shape. Perfect spheres are never found in origami, but there are models that come close to one, like the waterbomb. As a result, Timcampy v.1.0 is simply a waterbomb with wings:

If you followed the last link, you'd realize that the above model is missing a tail. In future versions, I'll try to make a tail using grafting. I'd need a really long one...

This model is too simple to make a CP for, I'll try to make some diagrams instead. ^_^

At the very least I can put on a good face to a bad result and call this model the Golden Snitch!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Honeycomb

2007-10-23T20:35:00.000+08:00

Hi guys

Here's the CP for one of my creations mentioned yesterday: the Honeycomb.

Haha... You guys should know why I chose to post an extra-large picture.

Don't be intimidated! The technique is much simpler than it looks! Once you've figured out how to fold the first cell, the rest are a piece of cake.

Good luck! I'm still trying to design a simple bee to go with my honeycomb... I can't just borrow one from a nearby exhibit next time, can I?

See ya!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Origami Exhibition in Clementi Community Day

2007-10-23T11:34:00.001+08:00

Yo folks... once again I post after a reaaaly long break. It seems like my blog is only active during School Holidays! Well, today is an exception cos' yesterday was my very first Origami Exhibiton!!

Last week the members of the Origami Singapore group were gathered around some tables at the Clementi Students' Service Center. We were smoothing out the final details of the plan for our exhibition on 21 October. We decided on the table format and model categories and distribution. Much to my delight, I was going to have a whole section to myself as a Singaporean Designer for my creations. Of course, I have to fold them first, so for the next few days I was rushing origami models an hour a day... I also had to buy all sorts of paper for my models... On Sunday and Monday I was rushing to Bras Basah just to buy Elephant hide paper, Canson paper and Meta-cellulose paper which I didn't use at all in the end.

On the big day, I walked in to the room only to see tables and tables of Origami models from local and international folders. There were birds, insects, mammals, aquatic creatures, modular origami, miscellaneous objects,fantasy creatures, simple to intermediate origami and finally models from international folders and original designs from Singapore.

Kawasaki Rose, Simple to Intermediate Origami

Centipede, Insects

Yoda, International Folders

Cigarettes, Matchbox and Pentagonal Ashtray, International Folders

Ancient Dragon, Fantasy Creatures

American Lobster, Local Designers

Cuckoo Clock, Miscellaneous Objects

Five Interlocking Tetrahedra, Modular Origami

Of course, there are many more models in the exhibition, but this post is starting to get a little long. Wanna see more models? Just come to the real thing and see! ^^

Now for my models:

I had set up 5 of my own creations, namely:

The Dragon-Rider

Most visitors to this blog will have been familiar with this model, as this is just an up-grade of my Dragon. One of the spikes on the dragon's back has been converted into a hooded rider on the dragon.

The Knight on Horseback

Ah well... Use better paper!

A House

A 4 x 2 x 3 building block with a 4 x 6 platform perched on top as a roof and a set of doors.

Dragon-Skin

A sort of square tessellation, but in reality it looks really like dragon-skin. As seen from the top and bottom of the model, the scales actually stand out.

A Honeycomb

This is basically a hexagonal tessellation, with walls in between to make it a honey-comb. Actually it's sort of a brick-like rectangular tessellation, but if you let it curve in and lengthen the rectangles will transform into hexagons.

Heheh... I borrowed the bee from the insects section next door!

Within the few hours we had for our exhibition, Eileen Tan set up a small workshop to teach visitors some simple origami models. Some of the models taught were the magazine box, traditional crane, a stand-up heart and a pair of "talking lips" which would open and shut by moving flaps on both sides.

Eileen teaching some guys from SP how to fold the traditional crane

Some of the models taught in the workshop

But the star of the show has yet to come...

In every workshop there simple has to have a difficult model right?
Well, here goes!

Santa Claus

If you need any more clues to fold this model, here's a CP:

Two folds... heheh.
There can only be one model easier than this, and that's here.

Haiz... Wasn't this exhibition fun? Looking at all those models almost made me drool... :) I just feel like folding all of them!

I really hope I can take part in another Origami Exhibition with this fantastic origami group!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

A Grand Entrance

2007-09-08T16:30:00.000+08:00

Yo folks!

Here's the new sub-model i promised in the last post!

The doors are actually made from the "extended flaps" in the picture below:

It's actually very simple to make; just create a raised platform with dimensions 2 x 4, and x = 1.

To include these doors onto a building, you must create the door right in the space where you are going to create a building block. You will have to plan out the position of the door, and if the building block is big enough, you can actually move the door higher up to make a window.

Just as the dimensions of the platform can be changed, the size of the doors can also be varied, so you can make a set of tall, narrow doors or short, wide ones.

This is only one example of the many possible functions of the raised platform sub-model. Curious folders are free to explore and come up with new ways to use the platform in their models.

This a short post, cos' I'll be meeting Wolf and gang in the afternoon. See ya!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Cottage Roof II

2007-09-03T03:11:00.000+08:00

It's the holidays again!

In the past few months, I was bogged down by homework, projects and exams. Sorry if you've been disappointed by the "hibernation" of this blog. To make it up for it all, here comes the tenth post!

If you take a look at the previous post, you will notice that the cottage roof shown there seems to be a little incomplete. A true cottage roof just has to extend beyond the top of the building, doesn't it? After days of thinking and planning, I decided to use this sub-model, which just might help things out.

The whole idea of the new roof is just to create a "platform" and create a cottage roof right beneath it. The edges of this platform will extend beyond the roof and make it look more complete.

This certainly looks familiar, doesn't it?

However, I've added all the correct creases to this CP, and if you compare this CP to previous ones, you will realise that this CP looks a little different. I usually avoid putting all those minor creases there to avoid confusion, but I realised that many of you might have been stumped by their absence.

This is what the platform looks like:

In this sub-model, a 6 x 6 platform with x = 1 is used. Work out how to make one yourself!

A zoom-in to the corners of the platform:

There! Hope you can understand the CP better now.

These are the "extensions" I'm looking for:

After folding it, you will realise that this sub-model has a lot of room for variation. Indeed the size of the "platform" can be changed, but it has to follow a set of rules:

The width of the eight "columns" extending from the raised platform ("x") have to be equal.
Any dimension of the platform cannot be smaller than 2x.

The next step wil be to create a simple cottage roof right under it.
This is a little complicated, but so long as the tip of the roof touches the middle of the platform, you are done. By now you will realise that a whole new roof has been created, one that extends along the edges of the simple cottage roof.

You can see now that the 6 x 6 platform has been stretched over the top of the building to extend the roof.

Finally, all you have to do is to continue stacking building blocks under it and make a house!

Wait... there's something extra!
What's that at the bottom of the house?
Could it be... a set of doors?
Only one way to find out...... wait for the next post!

Good Luck!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

A Simple Cottage Roof

2007-06-18T10:48:00.000+08:00

No building is complete without a roof, so why don't we make? Here's a really simple one that's actually derived from the Building Block itself. After making one, you can stack it on a building block to make a simple house.

Roof first, then:

This CP bears a marked resemblance with the Building Block, doesn't it?

After a little experimentation, you should get this:

Sorry about the messy background.

Note the pleats on the right:

The roof is pretty loose and needs the help of a building block under it to lock the flaps down into a house:

Nice and neat.

As mentioned in the previous post, you must experiment with the model yourself to get it right.

By now, you should have realised the absolute importance of the heavy precreasing. Saves a lot of trouble, doesn't it? (Well actually it brings all the trouble to the front. As the chinese say, 先苦后甜.)

I apologise for the apparent lack of text in this post, I'll try to make it up in future posts...

As usual, good luck!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Preparations for Demonstrations

2007-06-17T03:20:00.000+08:00

The only reason why this became a post is because it took me a lot of effort.
And, of course, I forgot to post it before the one on Building Blocks.

Well, to show you guys what my techniques will probably result in, I decided to demonstrate to you all on a huge sheet of precreased paper. Well, I got a really gigantic piece of paper from the stationary shop, so it wouldn't make sense if I precreased too little on the paper. Thus, I decided to precrease a 64 x 64 grid, certainly the most I've ever done. It took me quite a few weeks, partly because I was lazy, but the end result was great.

You may want to compare this to other pictures in this blog and speculate about the size of the paper yourself.

If you do the math, I will have created 4096 little squares and folded 126 creases by the end of this project.

I even played around with the finished paper, forming a cute sort of spiral:

I hope this teaches you a lesson about the causes and effects of paper drift.

Enough now, let's fast-forward to Demo No.1: Building Block!

A solitary building the the midle of the desert.
If you can't imagine how the CP evolves into this, here's a useful picture of each of the four pleats going in the four directions:

That ought to help.

I mentioned about stacking building blocks on one another, so here goes:

I hope this picture helps you understand how the blocks are stacked on one another.
The blocks can even be made into towers by stacking equally-sized blocks on each other.

Wow. That's got to be the clearest picture I've taken...

Picture of pleats of the tower:

That should be enough now.

This CP is not exactly one of the hardest ones, but it requires plenty of self-exploration and a vivid imagination, and there is only so much I can instruct you without folding it in front of your face. Good luck!

(Subsequent CPs will include their demos in their own posts.)

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Building Blocks of a City

2007-06-17T02:35:00.000+08:00

A very long time before I consorted with crease patterns, I had played with precreased (albeit heavily) paper, and I found out what I thought and still think is a new type of folding: Creating structures and other buildings from a simple piece of paper, with the folded structures sticking out of the paper. No sides/edges are to be used, such that several structures can be linked together (with the remaining paper form the floor) to form something like a city.

The first sub-structure I chanced upon was the Building Block. It is a way of creating a cuboid shape rising above the paper. The building block technique can be repeated upon itself again and again, so a tall building appears.

Here's a CP depicting the building block technique:

The raised platform (the black square in the middle) can be of any rectangular shape. To repeat this technique on the same structure, just make sure the original raised block is within the new raised platform. Take note that although the technique can be repeated, it does not allow for the new raised platform to be smaller than the original raised block.

This technique is rather similar to boxpleating, the difference being it has a 3-D result. In the next few posts, I will introduce more techniques to you guys so that you will be able to create a whole virtual city by yourself!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

My First Dragon

2007-06-08T14:37:00.000+08:00

As I was studying the different bases that appear in Origami, I realised that bases could be a quick shortcut in the process of creation. At that time, I was trying to create simply (and rather vaguely) a monster, and thus I fiddled around with the paper until I arrived at a cute little base derived from the waterbomb base. Here you go...

Upon further analysis, I found out that this is essentially a blintzed bird base.

Subsequently, I folded my monster out of it, but it wasn't terribly satisfactory and thus I have forgotten how to fold it due to lack of practice.

It wasn't long, however, when I strove to improve on this base. It appeared that bases could evolve into more advanced ones with many more points through the process of blintzing, which invloves folding the 4 corners of the square to the centre and using the new folded square to fold the base. The flaps that come from the blintzing can be pulled out abd after some reshaping, a new base emerges.

Well, I tried the blintzing method on the Monster Base and it worked well, transforming my boring little base into a much more interesting one: the Super Monster Base. (Please do not criticise my naming, I'm just sticking to the name I gave it literally years ago. =)

Okay, so it looks pretty but it also looks pretty different from the monster base. However, with a little experimentation, you'll find out that it is indeed a blintzed monster base.

Of course, I simply must find something good to fold from the base, and my first choice was Monster mark two. It turned out really nice, with claws and wings and many other things and I was very satisfied with it. However, I still forgot about it.

So, quite naturally (many other folders will agree with me), my next choice was a dragon. It was grand and majestic, with claws and wings and many many many other things. Here's a photo of it:

Just look at those huge spikes. Wow.

Admittedly, the head looks more like one of an eagle or griffin than that of a dragon. But with those huge wings and big spikes, what could be better?

I bet you're itching to fold this beauty, so here's the CP:

Just to help, the edge grafts are as wide as 1/8 of the side of the starting square.
Unfortunately, I'm a very lazy guy and I neglected to put any creases on the edge grafts. Just treat the paper as unfolded after the edge grafts, it'll work out right.
Stretch your imagination when folding the squares allocated for the head and tail!
Just for an interesting challenge, can you reverse-engineer from the photos to find out how I folded my head and tail?

It looks horribly complicated and doesn't seem to have a connection with the super monster base at all... Still, I would encourage experienced folders to try folding the dragon from the base.

Even the CP looks beautiful...
Good luck folding the CP!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

A Common Source of Inspiration

2007-06-01T11:01:00.000+08:00

Again, this model was created years ago. I have not folded it for an equally long time, yet I have not forgotten one bit of the instructions. You will find out why soon enough...

I had been playing with a piece of paper in my mind while in the washroom, when I discovered a folding sequence that would give me some sort of module that if 4 of them were pieced together would form a box.

Eagerly, I tried it out on a real piece of scrap paper and it worked out really well. That was years ago, yet now, I folded it again without a single mistake, due to the fact that it had only 5 steps.
Even so, doing the diagram would be tedious, and I doubt anyone would fail to recreate the box perfectly from a CP with enough practice and patience.

So, here it is:

A Modular Box made of 4 Modules. A glance at the module CP then...

I told you it was easy.

The module will come out like this:

For assembling modular origami, 2 things you need to take note of are where the pockets are and which flaps to stick into which pockets. In some models the flaps and pockets are rather obvious, which may not be the case for this model, but I encourage folders to try this out (especially as it is just as easy as it looks) and find out for themselves the flap/pocket combos.

The more inquisitive folders will ask with a furrowed brow: "What if I want to make the box higher? It looks so flat... can I edit the CP such that I can get a cubic box, or even a tall, long one?"
The answer: look at the bottom section of the CP. The 2 squares you see there are the only parts of the CP that cannot be edited. The top half can be lengthened as you like, so long as in the folding process it is folded in half like the CP to lock the "walls" together. In fact, I once made a cubic box using black and gold paper with the dimensions 1:1.5, made a matching lid (using slightly larger paper and folding a flatter box) and my mother was so ecstatic about it that she used it to contain a present that she gave an exchange student staying at our house. It's rather a pity that I don't have it with me now...

Well, there can be several variations to this simple box, and if you have any interesting ideas please contact me or leave a comment!

Lastly, I had made a curious observation about the box: It appears that there is a secret "pocket" hidden between the 2 layers that make up the lid or base of the box.

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Dwarf (Continued)

2007-05-30T11:48:00.001+08:00

Following on the last post...

Remember the pickaxe I made? I created a few other "tools" for the dwarf, namely the shovel, an axe and for some obscure reason, a kettle.

I had to create all of these by myself, and the axe was made as a weapon, due to my mother's comments that the dwarf looked like a nasty gang member holding the pickaxe like that.

It was fun designing the tools myself, especially the axe. The dwarf "held" the tools by using the thumb as a hook to reach into the lengthwise gap on the handles of the tools and surling the other fingers around the handle.

Behold the kettle!

Too bad the kettle's handle would never close up, leaving an open handle. Still, it didn't come out too bad...

I used up a whole sheet of A4 paper between all these models; 1 square for the dwarf, and the remainder was divided into 4 equal rectangles to fold 4 different tools.

I even tried to stick all the tools into the dwarf. The result was a very scary dwarf armed to the teeth with miscellaneous tools.

Now he really looks like some gang member. That cooks. And attacks innocent bystanders with a pickaxe.

My, my, that's not pure anymore, is it?

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Dwarf

2007-05-28T18:36:00.000+08:00

I was browsing the web when I found this CP on Eric Joisel's Origami:

It's not my fault if it's blur, at least I managed to decipher the writing.

The numbers at the left after all three curly brackets "}" are, I think, "2/6", which means that the paper is divided into 3.

This is not my creation, I just found it on the web and folded it. I'm kind of saving up my creations to post on longer intervals.

Here's what it looks like after I folded it:

The main things you have to do after collapsing the base: separate the hat from the head by sinking a little of the head flap in (decide which flap is which by yourself), form the face and beard, fold the big triangular body flaps together to form a sort of tunic, shape the legs and hands, form the shoes and finally crumple and bend the figure as you wish to give it a realistic touch. Don't forget to fold either the pickaxe or the shovel and add it to the dwarf!

(I'm not breaking the rules 'cos I treat the pickaxe and the dwarf as 2 separate models.)

Good Luck with this crease pattern!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Knight on Horseback

2007-05-25T16:30:00.000+08:00

I created this quite a few years ago, with a clear goal in mind and nothing to start on. So, I just played with the paper a little and I got something that looked like this:

Cool dude on a horse with a sword and board.
One big disadvantage of this model is that the front legs are rather shorter than the back ones... It keeps falling face-down.

Unlike the majority of the origami blogs I have seen so far, I do not plan out the Crease Pattern and collapse from it. Instead, I usually just play around with a base until I get what I want. That needs a lot of luck.

I used a few usual "algorithms" in making the model, like the spread-squashing of a point to form the face, double-rabbiting the legs of the horse and a good method for forming the tail and head of a horse. These algorithms are very useful in creating your own models, and they can only be found from experience, folding lots of other models.

I did not record any diagrams for this model, and I kind of forgot how to fold it and had to take apart one of my earlier models and analyse the folding method and refold it again.
However, thanks to Wolf and her advice on crease pattern software, I learnt how to use Inkscape and drew a CP for the Knight on Horseback.
Behold, my first-ever CP!

Hope it looks good... At least it looks less daunting than some CPs from other websites.
Black lines indicate mountain folds, while red lines indicate valleys.

It's mainly a weird version of the Blintzed Frog Base with one of its flaps stretched, except for one special part. Look at the top-left section carefully. You will see that creases that were mountain folds in other sections are valleys in there. This is no coincidence! In fact, in the early stages of folding this model, the paper is folded into a preliminary base and two adjacent flaps are folded together as one! Those flaps turn out as the top-left section and half of both the top-right section and bottom-left section. All clear?

It's less simple than it looks, so try it and see!
Please leave comments regarding the CP and any difficulties you may have encountered folding this model. If you really have folded it, please send me a copy. I may even publish it as a post!

Wolf has kindly folded the model for me to try out the CP, and she sent a picture of it to me. Here it is...

Wasn't really what I expected, but it looked cool anyway.

Special thanks again to Wolf for her advice!

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Well, first post on my blog!

2007-04-06T20:05:00.000+08:00

This blog was inspired by Eileen's blog, of course (you'll find it in the links if I have gathered the energy to update them) and as Cupcake said, our blogs will only be cheap imitations of Eileen's. Well, I just hope it won't be too bad... heheh. I've been trying to change the skin... but as with several other new-blogger users, blogskins.com skins just won't fit. Too bad, I've been eyeing this one for ages... (Ties in with my Bleach obsession). Enjoy your stay and please return here frequently! I will try and post often (I said I would try...), so please enjoy your visit!

There seems to be something really wrong with this post... the font size keeps changing and I cannot change it back.

Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen