My Flavor of Origami
If you’ve read my profile over there on the right, you might have noticed the “origami-folding” part. But when you think of origami, what do you think of?
Paper cranes? I don’t know how to make those.
Or maybe Origami Yoda? I only wish I were that cool.
So what’s up with me saying I’m origami-folding? What can I make?
That’s right! Piles of brightly colored, crinkly parallelograms!
Okay, I’m kidding. I hadn’t assembled them yet. Here’s what they really make.
It’s called a stellated icosahedron. The “stellated” means it’s pointy and star-like. The “icosahedron” means if those pointy parts were flattened down, it’d have twenty faces.
In general, this style is called modular origami. You make a bunch of identical pieces and assemble them. Very geometric.
You can imagine why I like it so much.
It’s also a great way to fill a day of math classes when the timing doesn’t work for a regular math lesson. Like the last day before Christmas break and you just did a chapter or unit test the day before, so you definitely don’t want to start a new chapter.
It also makes the students think their math teacher is pretty cool.
That is cool.
I tried a swan once for my kids. Had the YouTube video running in front of me. Still couldn’t do it. I had to give up.
Maybe if someone sat right in front of me and I copied them…
You are far too cute for words.
I love math Mondays. This one reminds me of folding the circle.
Hand out to the kids a bunch of precut paper circles and have them fold it in half, they just created the straight line. Now with the circle folded back out have them fold the straight line on itself. They have found the center, AND also they can now fold lines between the points created on the perimeter to make a square! Oh and we aren’t done yet, oh no: fold back out to the circle, now fold the edge of the circle to the center and repeat this twice each time fold the lines to meet at the perimeter: Glory Alleluia! An equal lateral triangle! They have just created some basic elements of geometry with nothing but circular action on circular action. Is that COOOULL or what?