Name: See a NASA Physicist's Incredible Origami
Uploaded: 2019-05-17T10:26:44.000Z
Duration: 3 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

- One of the most important attributes of origami is,

once we have studied and understood the way paper folds

and unfolds, we can apply those patterns to things

I hope by bringing the tools of mathematics

into my origami design that I can then fold something

My name is Robert Lang, and I'm a physicist

Origami is the Japanese name for the art of folding paper,

and most origami is folded from a single sheet of paper

but my study was science and engineering.

I worked for NASA doing research on lasers,

but throughout that whole time I had been pursuing origami,

In 2001, I quit my job to try to make a career

I've worked on a couple of different folding patterns

that were round and would wrap into a cylindrical geometry

to fit into a rocket; and I developed an airbag in a car

that inflates from a small, folded bundle.

So, whenever an engineer creates something that opens and closes

in a controlled way, they can make use of

Over the years, math has allowed me to realize

as an artist, shapes and creations that I couldn't achieve

Traditional origami was relatively simple.

The designs would have taken maybe 20 or 30 steps at most,

but today, origami pieces can be so complicated that

they can have tens, hundreds, maybe even a thousand steps.

When I'm folding, it's like working with an old friend.

It's like dancing with a partner whose moves I know.

If I move this way, I know my partner is going to move

that way, and so I explore the math, develop the equations,

solve the equations, create the folding pattern,

For me, the driving force is that there's always

something new to try: a new problem, a new subject,

a new shape that I didn't think I was able to create before,

but now I think I know how to realize it, and each time

I solve a problem I get this wonderful feeling,

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See a NASA Physicist's Incredible Origami

entire

pattern

realize

pursue