Robert Lang on TED

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!

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

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

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

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

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! ^_^