PATTERN RECOGNITION

NEWLY DISCOVERED ORIGAMI FORMS PUT THE BLOOM ON THE BOLD

- STORY: KENNETH CHANG / NYT

The art of origami goes back centuries — enough time to explore every possible crease that can be made in a sheet of paper, one might think.

And yet, researchers have now found a new class of origami that they call bloom patterns. Resembling idealised flowers, many bloom patterns are rotationally symmetric around the centre.

The bloom patterns, with their set of attractive properties, appear promising for future engineering uses, especially for large structures that are sent to outer space. They fold up flat and compactly, they can be constructed out of one flat sheet, and they can be extended to ever larger shapes.

The discoveries originated from the paper-folding explorations of Zhongyuan Wang, a sophomore at Brigham Young University in Utah.

“I love to do origami, but if I can use origami to make practical applications that benefit the world, that will be a dream come true,” Wang, who goes by Kelvin as his American name, said in a video produced by BYU.

Wang, along with Larry Howell, a professor of mechanical engineering at BYU, and Robert Lang, an origami artist and theorist who lives in Pasadena, California, reported their findings in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Proceedings Of The Royal Society A.