Unfolding the Future of Origami

Overheard at National Geographic

National Geographic

Science, Society & Culture

4.5 • 10.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2023

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The future is bright for origami, the centuries-old art of paper folding. In recent decades, scientists, engineers, and designers have pushed origami beyond its traditional roots and applied its patterns to fascinating technologies like foldable kayaks and tiny robots that can fit into a pill capsule. We’ll fold cranes with National Geographic writer Maya Wei-Haas, who will share the latest advancements with origami and what the future holds for this art form in science. For more information on this episode, visit natgeo.com/overheard. Want more? We’ve just touched the surface of origami science. To go deeper, read Maya’s story in the February issue of National Geographic magazine. She talks about more applications of origami, including origami in space. Did you know that origami could be the key to making better face masks? Origami’s unique folds may be able to make face masks fit better. Check out our article exploring this possibility. Also explore Plus, grab some origami and head to the ocean. Origami folds could be the key to perfecting a super delicate robot that can catch deep-sea animals, study them, and release them unharmed. If you like what you hear and you want to support more content like this, please rate and review us in your podcast app and consider a National Geographic subscription. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The voices that you're hearing are National Geographic writer Maya Weihus and Mark
0:16.8	Miskin, who is an electrical engineer.
0:19.2	Maya is preparing to enter Mark's laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania and it's
0:23.5	a pretty involved process.
0:25.5	So you walk into that building and you're presented with this orange glass wall and behind
0:32.8	that is their clean room that he uses to make these in.
0:36.0	Their models are, you know, the width essentially of a human hair is smaller perhaps and so like
0:41.6	if you get hair in it, if you get dust on it, it's going to destroy what you're working
0:45.7	on so it has to be extremely clean.
0:48.0	They have to be really careful because Mark is making something delicate and extraordinary.
0:53.6	He does these really fascinating, like nanosized robots.
0:58.2	They're tiny.
0:59.2	You can have them walking around or like they have a video on their website of one of them
1:03.9	waving at an amoeba, which is hilarious.
1:06.2	It's interesting.
1:07.2	Yeah.
1:08.2	Yeah.
1:09.2	You just missed the scientific discovery.
1:12.2	This robot is actually just in straight water.
1:14.2	Yeah.
1:15.2	It's straight.
1:16.2	It can move around.
	...

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