Science and Art

My nerdy side likes it when art and science collide. Today, CBS's Sunday Morning Show did an interesting story about Robert Lang, an engineer turned origami artist. He does the most amazing things with single sheets of paper. Even more fascinating to me, he understands the mathematics of it and has applied origami to engineering problems, like designing airbags and building expandable telescopes. Now that is something I can't even begin to imagine!

I find origami fascinating and exceedingly difficult. Like every school kid, I can make a paper crane, and I used to be able to make the blow up frog; the one that you blow air in to puff up it's abdomen. When my kids were little I bought a really cool origami book- or so I thought until I tries to fold my first T-Rex. Yikes, even with instructions I found it exceedingly difficult. I don't think I managed to fold more than two things, and they probably didn't come out quite right.

Check out his website, it's full of interesting things. For many of his creations he shows the crease patterns, not that they would help us mere mortals learn to fold anything so complex. It almost makes want to improve my math skills!