Origami

In first grade, one of my classmates brought in tiny origami frogs for the whole class. Whether they were made by the 1st grader or their parents, the intricacy of the models and the fact that they were folded from a single sheet of paper really interested me and inspired me to learn how. I taught myself many different models over the years.

More recently, in my senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to take a course simply and deceivingly called "Shapes". While it consisted of the very obscure and doubtfully practical concepts of non-Euclidean Geometry such as three-toruses, klein bottles, and platonic solid duality, I really enjoyed the course and found interesting connections between non-Euclidean Geometry and modular origami. In my final project for this class I studied and researched the connections between the concepts we explored in the class and modular origami and folding algorithms. This lead me to take part of an MIT online class in folding algorithms.

In addition to the mathmatical side of origami, I also enjoy making origami as a way to relax. All you need is a piece of paper. Origami makes great birthday or holiday gifts, and when combined with an arduino, switches, ambient light sensors, LEDs designed to simulate candles, or all of the above, so many cool things can be made. If you're interested, look as some of my creations below.