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Welcome into the fold
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Instructions: Getting the Miura fold right is tricky at first, but gets easier with practice. We suggest tracing the template opposite (or printing one off from newscienti.st/ Miura-ori) and getting the first few mistakes out of your system on a dummy sheet.
Fold along the diagonal pink lines in the middle row so that each pair of the fan sections has a kink in the middle. Work from one side of the paper to the other.
Welcome into the fold Origami, the Japanese art of paperfolding, is pretty to look at, although well known for being technically fiddly. Still, getting something big to collapse into something small in a safe and repeatable way has no shortage of realworld uses. In recent years, origami techniques have helped to solve practical problems in fields ranging from space flight to surgery. Perhaps the most widespread and useful innovation they adopted was the Miura-ori, a type of fold named after the Japanese astrophysicist, Koryo Miura, who popularised it in the 1980s. The fold itself, with its distinctive triangular mountain-valley shape, has been around for centuries – even cropping up in the necklines of Renaissance-era dresses. But it was Miura who first understood its significance, as New Scientist reported in 1980 (23 October, p 230). From bulky street maps to solar sails designed to go into space, any large flat sheet tessellated with this pattern can be packaged efficiently and unfurled with ease. Today, this simple fold helps surgical stents fit into blood vessels, maximises the surface area of foldable batteries and makes furniture easily collapsible. Or, as in this special festive issue pull-out, it can build a cosmic holiday bauble. MAIN IMAGE: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC, AND STSCI INSTRUCTION PHOTOS: DAVID STOCK
Score each fold with a blunt knife or a flat-head screwdriver. Be sure to take your time at this stage because mistakes here could trip you up later on.
Repeat this for the other diagonal lines, folding in the opposite direction. Start with the row nearest the first kinks and work outwards.
Fold the vertical lines in alternate directions to make a structure like a fan or concertina bellows. Then repeat these folds in the opposite direction, so that each fold can go both ways.
You should now have the paper folded into a C-shape. Repeat for all sheets of paper, then glue the marked sides together (matching the letters). To hang your bauble, bend a paper clip into a loop with a hook on either end. Insert this into the top and tie a string to the loop. Open the paper and bend it gently across the folds, along the middle. (This isn’t a proper origami fold, so don’t bend too hard It’s just a trick to make the next folds easier.)
Watch our tutorial online at newscienti.st/Miura-ori
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Glue here
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#FoldMeUniverse
Instructions: Getting the Miura fold right is tricky at first, but gets easier with practice. We suggest tracing the template opposite (or printing one off from newscienti.st/ Miura-ori) and getting the first few mistakes out of your system on a dummy sheet.
Fold along the diagonal pink lines in the middle row so that each pair of the fan sections has a kink in the middle. Work from one side of the paper to the other.
Welcome into the fold Origami, the Japanese art of paperfolding, is pretty to look at, although well known for being technically fiddly. Still, getting something big to collapse into something small in a safe and repeatable way has no shortage of realworld uses. In recent years, origami techniques have helped to solve practical problems in fields ranging from space flight to surgery. Perhaps the most widespread and useful innovation they adopted was the Miura-ori, a type of fold named after the Japanese astrophysicist, Koryo Miura, who popularised it in the 1980s. The fold itself, with its distinctive triangular mountain-valley shape, has been around for centuries – even cropping up in the necklines of Renaissance-era dresses. But it was Miura who first understood its significance, as New Scientist reported in 1980 (23 October, p 230). From bulky street maps to solar sails designed to go into space, any large flat sheet tessellated with this pattern can be packaged efficiently and unfurled with ease. Today, this simple fold helps surgical stents fit into blood vessels, maximises the surface area of foldable batteries and makes furniture easily collapsible. Or, as in this special festive issue pull-out, it can build a cosmic holiday bauble. MAIN IMAGE: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC, AND STSCI INSTRUCTION PHOTOS: DAVID STOCK
Score each fold with a blunt knife or a flat-head screwdriver. Be sure to take your time at this stage because mistakes here could trip you up later on.
Repeat this for the other diagonal lines, folding in the opposite direction. Start with the row nearest the first kinks and work outwards.
Fold the vertical lines in alternate directions to make a structure like a fan or concertina bellows. Then repeat these folds in the opposite direction, so that each fold can go both ways.
You should now have the paper folded into a C-shape. Repeat for all sheets of paper, then glue the marked sides together (matching the letters). To hang your bauble, bend a paper clip into a loop with a hook on either end. Insert this into the top and tie a string to the loop. Open the paper and bend it gently across the folds, along the middle. (This isn’t a proper origami fold, so don’t bend too hard It’s just a trick to make the next folds easier.)
Watch our tutorial online at newscienti.st/Miura-ori
F
Glue here
E
A
Glue here
B
B
Glue here
A
C
Glue here
D
D
Glue here
C
E
Glue here
F