Pholding Physics

One of the problem physicists sometimes have when doing experiments with certain materials is trying to maximize the amount of material inside a space. A larger sheet of solar material will gather more sunlight and process it into electricity than a smaller one will.

But the wrinkle comes in when the experimenter or designer has to get that larger sheet into a smaller space. The power needs of a spacecraft require x amount of energy, which can be achieved with a sheet of x area. But there's only room for a sheet of y area, which is smaller and can't provide the needed power.

Enter origami, which means that in one sense, that wrinkle comes in literally. The material is folded, which means that it can be in a smaller space or, if it's going to be extended into a larger one, it can do so using less energy. Some physicists have recently been studying origami, the ancient Japanese art of folding paper into sculptures and shapes, as a way of doing the above and several other things.

The key is that something folded into an origami shape can be made to take up much less space until its full area is needed. It can be inserted into a small opening, for example, and then expanded. Engineers Zhong You and Kaori Kuribayashi from the University of Oxford developed a medical stent that does just that. When folded, it can be placed into a blocked artery though a small hole, but when expanded it will enlarge the opening through the blockage.

Increase study means increased attention paid to the math of the art form, which allows for more precision in origami-based structures. Physicists also find the idea of a two-dimensional object, through simple folding, becoming a three-dimensional object. Proponents of string theory, an explanation of how matter in the universe acts at its most basic level, propose as many as a dozen dimensions. Studying how a large flat piece of paper becomes a small three-dimensional crane, for example, might help them see how three dimensions of space "fold" into the much tinier higher dimensions the theory predicts.

Currently, physicists have problems "folding" objects that are too thick or too thin. While simulations can produce perfect creases in any substance, real-world folding of something that's too thick might be more likely to produce breakage rather than a sharp crease. And things that are too thin, like the ultrathin molecular substance called graphene, won't stay folded and never develop creases.

So it may be that origami never progresses beyond the mildly interesting with a few minor applications stage for scientists and researchers. Or it may be that some future scientist looks through some ultra-powerful micro-scanner and asks the prankster grad students who folded all of the Higgs bosons into cranes.