(Non)Existence of Pleated Folds: How Paper Folds Between Creases
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Demaine-non existence.pdf
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Author(s)
Demaine, Erik D.
Demaine, Martin L.
Hart, Vi
Price, Gregory N.
Tachi, Tomohiro
Date Issued
March 2011
Journal
Graphs and Combinatorics
Publisher
Springer Japan
Citation
Demaine, Erik D. et al. “(Non)Existence of Pleated Folds: How Paper Folds Between Creases.” Graphs and Combinatorics 27.3 (2011): 377–397.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We prove that the pleated hyperbolic paraboloid, a familiar origami model known since 1927, in fact cannot be folded with the standard crease pattern in the standard mathematical model of zero-thickness paper. In contrast, we show that the model can be folded with additional creases, suggesting that real paper “folds” into this model via small such creases. We conjecture that the circular version of this model, consisting simply of concentric circular creases, also folds without extra creases. At the heart of our results is a new structural theorem characterizing uncreased intrinsically flat surfaces—the portions of paper between the creases. Differential geometry has much to say about the local behavior of such surfaces when they are sufficiently smooth, e.g., that they are torsal ruled. But this classic result is simply false in the context of the whole surface. Our structural characterization tells the whole story, and even applies to surfaces with discontinuities in the second derivative. We use our theorem to prove fundamental properties about how paper folds, for example, that straight creases on the piece of paper must remain piecewise-straight (polygonal) by folding.
MIT Department
Lincoln Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00373-011-1025-2
