arts & life
April 26, 2012
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Poetry corner The Pan American is celebrating National Poetry Month by featuring poems by University students. For more poems visit the Arts and Life section on panamericanonline.com Diolkos Always I hear a train the sound of rails breaking ground to the west the hammering of bolts and steel on desert lands not my own.
Professor promotes math education with ancient
HOW-TO
Make a crane 1. Start
with a square piece of paper. Fold it in half diagonally.
2.
Fold in half from right to left diagonally again.
the bottom 3. Holding three layers of paper,
pull the right side of the top layer.
You get the shape above. Then flip it over.
4.
Fold point B to point A while at the same time folding the crease inward so that C folds into D.
A
B D
C
By Karen Antonacci The Pan American Cranes sit on Kenichi Maruno’s desk. Mostly miniature, angular cranes constructed of flowered paper, kept company by boxes, bugs and other objects made through the folding art, origami. Maruno started practicing origami in his native Kurashiki, Japan, as a child. Now he wants to use the craft he started at age 4 to teach mathematics to UTPA students. “I realized that many students don’t like math. When they’re small, they lost interest,” he said. “Origami is better to show, because using simple paper, you can make any object a 3D object. It’s very interesting that it can just be paper, just 2D, and then using it you make a 3D object, an animal or a bug.” Maruno, an associate professor who has been with UTPA six years and teaches a graduate-level course in applied mathematics, among others, made a presentation to students for Pi+Epsilon Day, March 22. Pi Day was an event held in the Mathematics and General Sciences Building to celebrate two constants in math. The students from the UTPA chapter of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics took notice of the origami presentation and, with Maruno’s help, put together a presentation of their own. Now four to five students come to his office regularly to practice origami and a graduate student in his course is doing her class project on origami and math. The mathematical element to paper folding has been make some 5. Now creases: fold the
right and left sides in to the middle line and the top down along the top line. Keep the top fold down, but onfold the sides.
recently explored by the likes of Erik Demaine, a 31-year-old computer science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who at age 20 became the youngest faculty member in MIT history. Maruno has a copy of Demaine’s book, Geometric Folding Algorithms, on hand in his office. “(Demaine is) a very wellknown mathematician, the top in the world,” Maruno said. “To do origami, it teaches geometry, and also algebra, computational geometry, discrete geometry.” It is generally accepted that the art form of paper folding cropped up in various countries shortly after the introduction of paper, in 105 AD. Practiced over the centuries, origami was transformed in the hands of Japan-native Akira Yoshizawa, who published 18 books and is regarded as the father of the art. Yoshizawa was honored March 14 by an intricately folded Google doodle featuring his signature butterflies, on what would have been his 101st birthday. Yoshizawa helped create the standardized system of origami diagrams, making an art that previously had to be demonstrated in person available in print. While mathematics governs many of the laws of origami, the journey to a completed project is an exercise in patience and following directions, according to Maruno. “If you want to get some correct origami, you must follow each step exactly, so logic is very important,” he said. “(In math,) if the student misunderstands the procedure, then they get a different answer, and if they do origami they
6.
can train their logical skills, to think correctly.” In recent years, origami has migrated from the hands of artisans and crafters to computer models of complicated engineering projects. Specifically, the ancient paper art has proved useful in solving engineering problems from the airbags in cars to heart stents in people. In 2007, medical researchers in the U.K. developed a stainless steel tube that can shrink to 12 mm wide when it’s put in place. Once there, it can expand to almost double that size to provide a path for blood vessels through a blocked artery. Maruno said he is hopeful that the students who practice origami with him might one day use it to solve an engineering or mathematics problem, but he also wants them to take the artistic aspect with them as well. “It’s just a fun activity,” Maruno said. “You don’t need to think of this as education, this is a hobby, an art.” Maruno mused about a largescale, collaborative origami project with students in the future. He considered the pointed cranes competing for space on his desk. “The famous (origami pattern) is the crane, it’s the beautiful one... and a symbol of peace,” he said, referring to the Japanese legend of attaining a wish by making 1,000 paper cranes. “(The legend says) if you make a thousand, you will have peace and everyone will be happy. No war, no fights and just good activity. So maybe some day we’ll make 1,000 cranes or bugs or dinosaurs or paper balloons.”
Holding on to the bottom three layers, pull the top layer upward until the creases on the sides fold in on themselves and flatten them down resulting in a diamond shape.
Finished crane!
10.
Fold one of the tips in to make a beak/head and tail, and fold the two wings down.
9.
Grab one of the two bottom points and pull it up into itself. Do the same to the other point.
I hear voices from the east carrying picks and shovels their tired arms laying miles of tracks to the cities I will build to the future I will breathe. The path must be laid down before we can live, they say. The past must be laid down before we can live. The clattering from Shinjuku Station wakes me up and it’s Monday morning once again. Passengers move cautiously across the platform they guard their destinations with suits and ties speak only to themselves about themselves. I follow their steps toward the car but I cannot remember which stop is mine who will I ask when the doors seal shut when the tunnel ahead envelopes my cries? Nine months pass and I arrive in Times Square. I’m greeted by a sidewalk of white gloves applauding my return their long skinny fingers point toward the sky
8.
SImilarly to step 5, fold in the sides to the lines. Flip it over and do the same to the back.
7.
Now your shape should look like this. Make sure you make your creases sharp. Flip the shape over and do steps 5 and 6 again.
What high towers your ancestors have raised, they cheer. What geography they’ve forged for our bodies to rest. But I am too distracted to respond to their praise and instead, I follow a stray dog outside of the city into a country of only railroads and workers where, without warning, they hand me an ax, then break both my legs. Now here, they all laugh, still planting old tracks, we must build life again. - Esteban Rodriguez