Product Description

What do proteins and pop-up cards have in common? How is opening a grocery bag different from opening a gift box? How can you cut out the letters for a whole word all at once with one straight scissors cut? How many ways are there to flatten a cube? You can answer these questions and more through the mathematics of folding and unfolding. From this book, you will discover new and old mathematical theorems by folding paper and find out how to reason toward proofs. With the help of 200 color figures, author Joseph O'Rourke explains these fascinating folding problems starting from high school algebra and geometry and introducing more advanced concepts in tangible contexts as they arise. He shows how variations on these basic problems lead directly to the frontiers of current mathematical research and offers ten accessible unsolved problems for the enterprising reader. Before tackling these, you can test your skills on fifty exercises with complete solutions. The book's Web site, http://www.howtofoldit.org, has dynamic animations of many of the foldings and downloadable templates for readers to fold or cut out.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #425290 in Books
• Published on: 2011-04-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.98" h x .39" w x 5.98" l, .75 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 190 pages

Review
"The major theorems presented are remarkable - results that may surprise the reader include the fact that, with the right folds, any shape or collection of shapes (even ones with holes in) that is composed of straight lines may be cut out from a sheet of paper with just a single cut."
Martin Smith, London Mathematical Society Newsletter

"Readers learn firsthand how the right way of looking at the right question potentially launches new fields of mathematics."
D.V. Feldman, Choice Magazine

"... a great book for someone who wants to learn about the mathematics behind origami without being overwhelmed by the mathematics itself. This is a great book for a high school or undergraduate student to get introduced to the open problems in computational origami."
Brittany Terese Fasy & and David L. Millman, SIGACT News

About the Author
Joseph O'Rourke is Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department, a Professor of Mathematics, and Director of Arts and Technology at Smith College. His research is in computational geometry, developing algorithms for geometric computations. He has won several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987 and the NSF Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars in 2001. He has published more than 145 papers in journals and conference proceedings, more than 30 of which were coauthored with undergraduates. He has taught folding and unfolding to students in grade school, middle school, high school, college and graduate school, and to teachers - of grade school, middle school, and high school - professors, and researchers. This is his sixth book.

Customer Reviews

Most helpful customer reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Great book on linkages, origami, and polyhedra
By Ed Pegg Jr
The random pages from "Click to Look Inside" were good enough for me to order this book, and I was not disappointed. Good illustrations, good math, and good writing on every page.

For example, on page 138, he asks for the polyhedra other than a cube which can be folded from a Latin cross. He shows 7 tetrahedra, 3 pentahedra, 4 hexahedra, and 6 octahedra. He explains that this was unknown territory that he ventured into with 5 college students, and they made these discoveries.

Most of the book concerns older problems, such as linkages and origami, but there was plenty of newer material, such as robot arms and protein folding.

The supporting website is howtofoldit.org, which has some animations. Excellent book. Recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Origami on steroids
By Lisa Karczmit
I love origami and have always been curious as to the mathematical/scientific principles behind it. This book describes in depth the multitude of folds and angles involved in any folding project. It is a little beyond what I was looking for, giving super-detailed, extremely technical descriptions of the art of paper folding and then some. If you are looking for an explanation of folding, involving advanced mathematics, this is the book for you.

I really enjoyed Chapter 5 which includes some cool cutting projects - I call them "one-cut wonders" - they are available in template form on the book's webpage. Fun!!!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A gift of a book
By reader
O'Rourke is clearly one of those exceptionally gifted teachers who enjoys making complex ideas intelligible and exploring his subject matter with the reader. This is a fascinating and beautifully executed introduction to the mathematics of various folding structurs - O'Rourke provides a rigorous and stimulating explanation accessible to the mathematically interested lay reader.