Mathematical Origami | Hacker News Reader

Mathematical Origami

mathigon.org

111 pointssigna1122 comments

It should probably be noted somewhere that this is more "papercraft" than "origami", and the thing you download is just the net of the solid, not instructions to make what's in the picture.

Also saddened by the lack of Catalan solids

Some of the platonics have folding instructions not just the papercraft net but yeah I wish some of the more interesting ones had actual instructions for the thing being shown too.

Ah, I didn't see those

You didn't scroll past the first section before commenting?

I looked at the page, and decided I wanted to see how to origami some of the archimedian solids, which are lower down the page. I don't find platonic solids as interesting so I didn't click on them. I saw they existed but you can't see that they have folding instructions unless you click on them

Less than a half dozen of the things on that page have a set of actual origami instructions available. I can completely see missing the few out of all the others because they're the less interesting items on the page.

Maybe it is a work-in-progress and they just didn’t get around to doing all of them (it’s probably a lot of work). Most of the more complex/compound ones don’t have instructions or nets at all. The paper models are still very beautiful.

The instructions seem rather sparse, like the Archimedean solids only have folding nets, and not the folding instructions that produce the cool looking pictures with the holes in the faces.

Even for the intersecting tetrahedra where instructions are available, I see that it's basically constructing the edges from 30 pieces of paper and then assembling them together. I wish they have more things that were built from a single square piece of paper.

It's definitely disappointing and feels like a lazy site to not have much more than "look at these neat origami representations of these shapes.

Building from a single sheet is pretty limiting and beyond a cube build like the classic inflatable lantern you'd likely need glue to hold the folds down I think.

The 'origami ball' on the bottom left doesn't link to instructions.

In case anyone wants to make it, you can google 'venus kusudama'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNwPzwtAme4

https://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/heres-the-venus

It is possible to fold a cube from a single sheet. The cube on the page is made from several units. The method for folding a cube from a single sheet was independently invented by Kazou Haga, Kunihiko Kasahara, Jeannine Mosely, me, and probably some others as well.

https://www.iwriteiam.nl/box-fold.html

Kusudama is your keyword if you want to learn how to do these :)

The 5 intersecting tetrahedra is particularly cool, and I've used these instructions to assemble it http://origametry.net/fit.html

At the danger of spamming this (well - posting it for the second time in 6 months) - I'm still trying to find the select demographic who appreciate this:

https://ixxyxr.github.io/polyhydra-web/?m=3

Maybe I'm just the wrong demographic, but I clicked around for a bit and couldn't really tell what I was looking at. In particular I couldn't figure out how to "Choose a preset or click Random".

Edit: I found the presets in the end, I was not expecting them to be above the other controls, when it's at step 3 in the "getting started" list.

Yeah - the lack of hand holding is partly laziness and partly intentional. I personally love digging into deep visual toys and figuring out what various button presses do.

But I probably do need to make it a little less mysterious and fix some of the obvious ux gotchas.

The brief tutorial is also probably slightly out of date since I added some features.

I always wait for someone to post origami on Hacker News so that I can publicize my own work on origami: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/7/2/200011/9...

I was lucky enough to meet the guy behind mathigon for dinner a long time ago. He's brilliant! I'm always excited to see what he is up to! Glad to see this voted up.

This is not origami.

Sure it is - just a bunch of origamis stuck together.

Most of them don't have origami instructions if they have instructions at all. I didn't find any beyond a few of the platonic solids.

The cut-and-stick nets aren't but the rest most certainly are! Look up "The Complete Book of Origami Polyhedra". I've made some of them myself: they use only square paper without tearing, cutting or sticking.

Modular origami construction of various mathematical solids was pioneered by Tomoko Fuse in the 1980s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoko_Fuse

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Tomoko-Fuse/author/B004L2C2A4/...

The author is still creating new work and writing new books.

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