I'm with tef, who is going to tell you something
you might not know about origami.
Tef, take it away.
I'd like to tell you about a piece of origami,
that's in space. Now, space satellites, they have solar
panels and solar panels need to unfold.
You might imagine a piece of paper slowly unfolding.
Unfortunately, to unfold most solar panels, you need
two motors. One to pull it this way, and one to pull it up
this way. But, Japanese astrophysicists realised that you
could probably do it with one motor instead, and what
he came up with was this. He could take a solar panel
and unfold it with one motor all the way out.
Not only that, he can also fold it all the way back in.
How this actually works is, you fold the piece of paper
into fifths, like so, admittedly I am making it look easy,
and then what you do, is you fold it over repeatedly,
almost making a snake all the way up such that there's a
a little bit of an angle all the way up. But what this
means is that this piece of paper can fold down far
more compactly and far more quickly than your
traditional folding. Now this actual fold is called the
Miura fold and it's also used outside of solar panels. It's
actually been recently tested with lithium ion batteries
because it folds down so compactly it improves the
energy density. But that's not the reason why I love this.
Not because it's gone into space but because it works
so well for maps. You can take a map out of your
pocket, instantly unfold it, see exactly where you are, and
instantly fold it back up again. And no other fold, I know
for maps, can do this thing. So despite being an
amazing piece of origami that's gone into space, it's
actually the most useful piece of origami I know
down here on earth.
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