Icosahedrons and another mosaic
Here’s a simple icosahedron made using the snapology methodology. In the past I have made much more complicated models using this system but I like the icosahedron because I can whip one up pretty quickly and still feel as though I’ve accomplished something. That’s probably why I have a whole collection of them in different colours!
I’ve also created a second origami photo mosaic. This one is organized in roughly in terms of complexity. It’s best viewed at large size so click on the photo to go to flickr. I feel as though this should be the cover of a high school geometry text book or at least be a poster hanging in a math classroom somewhere!
A series of curlers
The origami just keeps on coming! Here are a series of polyhedra I made using the Curler Units designed by Herman Van Goubergen. From left to right we have a Cuboctahedron, a Small Rhombicuboctahedron and a Icosidodecahedron. All three models were made out of post-it notes which I find to be ideal for the curler units.
Six Intersecting Squares
Here are two views of one of my recently made origami models: Six Intersecting Squares (pdf instructions) designed by Jorge C. Lucero. It’s very remenicient of the Five Intersecting Tetrahedra I’ve made several times before. The points of the five intersecting tetrahedra make a dodecahedron. I haven’t quite figured out what the points of this model form. In the spirit of full disclosure I will mention that since the model requires you to start with rectangles that are 1:2.2 I had to measure 4cm off of my 15x15cm origami sheets. I don’t usually like to measure and cut but it’s a cool looking model so I figured it was worth it.
Origami photo mosaic
Yesterday I came across a photo mosaic maker at fd’s Flickr Toys. I figured my square origami images would be perfect for this sort of thing and I really like the result. There’s always room for improvement though. My current ideas are to replace the four photos in the bottom left with new photos of more traditional polyhedra. I’m also thinking of ordering the photos in the mosaic by some measure of complexity (number of faces? units?) but maybe the more random (currently its chronological) ordering is best. I like the contrast of having one photo with a green background although I do have an identical model made in colour I could photograph against a white background. We’ll see where this goes …
Snub Dodecahedron
Here’s the latest installment in my autumn-2004-modular-origami-marathon. My level of origami production is directly related to the quantity of school work I have to do (I have a midterm in less than two hours). Really, it’s not so much study procrastination as it is a sanity preservation. This is a snub dodecahedron (80 triangular and 12 pentagonal faces, 60 verticies, 150 edges). I constructed it using the snapology methodology which I have become a huge fan of over the past two weeks.
Rhombic Hexecontahedron
A procrastination inspired google search of “modular origami blog” lead me to this site which inspired me to fold the rhombic hexecontahedron pictured below. Rhombic hexecontahedron. Doesn’t that have a nice geeky ring to it?
A 30 second math lesson: A rhombus is sort of like a square that someone stepped on and made into a diamond. A special type of rhombus is a golden rhombus in which the ratio of the “width” to the “length” of the rhombus is 1:phi where phi is the golden ratio. The golden ratio is incredibly cool. Anyway, you can make lots of different polyhedra using rhombi as the faces. One such polyhedra is the rhombic triacontahedron which has 30 golden rhombi faces and strong links to more everyday polyhedra like the dodecahedron and icosahedron. Now if you stellate (which sort of means stick a little pyramid on each face) the rhombic triacontahedron you wind up with the 60 face rhombic hexecontahedron. Ta da!
The faces of my model were made from a variation of this unit folded from square paper that was folded and ripped down to a golden rectangle (instructions in pdf). I could have measured and cut the paper down first but I decided to be a purist and make things more challenging. Unfortunately this added another layer of potential for error into the origami process. This is probably why my units didn’t fit together as tightly as I would have liked. It’s still pretty cool though.
A torus of cubes
It’s been a good 5 or 6 months since I last made any origami. I think that seeing the box full of origami that Heather made for her wedding in Cape Breton inspired me dig out my stash of paper when I got back to Seattle. Instead of starting small I decided to go hard core (because that’s how I do things) and made this torus of cubes. I’ve been wanting to make a torus for a really long time but the PHiZZ unit based ones are daunting and the one time I attempted one my units were too slipery. This version is made from 11 cubes constructed from 132 penultimate square modules. The torus itself is about 7 inches in diameter. It was somewhat difficult to assemble and the cube corners aren’t as crisp and clean as I would like them to be but I still think it’s FANTASTIC. The general design came from the cover of this book.
Hyperbolic Paraboloid
This evening I ventured away from the comfy world of making modular origami polyhedra and folded a hyperbolic paraboloid. It’s like a flashback to saddle points in max/min Calculus problems! Heather has made a few of these over the last little while and since she is my origami hero I had to try one too. The instructions I used can be found here.
Stella Octangula
My most recent origami creation is this stella octangula or stellated tetrahedron. I constructed it using 12 of these units. There are no instructions on the page for making the stella octangula although there is a picture of the finished product. If you ever want to make this polyhedron I offer the following words of advice:
- All the units should have the same parity. Equal numbers of these units of opposite parity can be used to make tetrahedrons, octahedrons and icosahedrons. To make the stella octangula they all must have the same parity though.
- Your new best friends are paperclips. Although the final object is quite solid it’s very delicate while being built. Since I am fundamentally opposed to using any tape or glue I used paperclips to hold it together as I went along.
Small Stellated Dodecahedron
Origami paper has totally taken over my desk at home – it’s a mess I can live with though. Last night’s creation was this small stellated dodecahedron (12 stellated pentagons; 60 triangular faces) constructed using 30 of these units.
