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! ^_^