NZSM Online

Get TurboNote+ desktop sticky notes

Interclue makes your browsing smarter, faster, more informative

SciTech Daily Review

Webcentre Ltd: Web solutions, Smart software, Quality graphics

Discovery

Origami Online

Origami is more than just paper folding, with mathematicians as intrigued as artists at its potential.

Mathematics professor Tom Hull notes that the Italian-Japanese mathematician Humiaki Huzita has formulated a list of axioms to define origami geometrically. Physicist Jun Maekawa has looked at fundamental theorems underlying origami and used these to design elegant models. Mathematician Toshikazu Kawasaki has a number of origami theorems to his name and has even generalized some of them to describe paper folding in higher dimensions. (Origami in the fourth dimension!)

"An enormous number of teachers have been developing ways to use origami to teach concepts in math, chemistry, physics and architecture," says Hull, and his Web site discusses how this has been done.
http://chasm.merrimack.edul/~thull/OrigamiMath.html

Teaching Mathematical Thinking through Origami is the goal of another site where origami is seen as a microcosm of mathematics, complete with modelling, adaptation of models and communication between modellers, whether students or mathematicians. Origami provides a way of encouraging students to become teachers, looking at different approaches in producing models, visualizing the changes the different folds, examining the relationship between flat planes and three-dimensional objects, and learning generalized geometrical concepts as a result
http://csis.pace.edu/~meyer/origami/

The Origami USA site http://www.origami-usa.org has teaching tips, looking at the goals of learning using origami and including a section on the special vocabulary involved. And an excellent list of links can be found at http://www.paperfolding.com/math/index.html.