A year and a half ago at Christmas time I started making a series of modular origami structures that are known as polypolyhedra since they are made up of an "orderly tangle" of other polygons or polyhedra. They are only held together by frictional locks (ok, ok, I did use tape a couple of times...but that's just because so many people have handled them!) and are all made up of a single type of modular origami unit. Since it was Christmas time, I decided to build them out of large (12 inch) metallic cardstock. Normally, these are hanging up in my classroom, but I took them down to use my classroom for a location to film part of a webvideo series that I'm working on with my brother, a cousin and a bunch of my students.

To learn more about these geometric figures check out: http://www.langorigami.com/science/polypolyhedra/polypolyhedra.php4 and while you're at it check out more of Dr. Robert Lang's Origami. By the way he's a Ph.D. Physicist!

The five intersecting tetrahedra is a fun little puzzle to solve. There are probably millions of ways to put the object together but only a few that work without causing the paper to bend a lot! I think that I could probably build and assemble it in a couple of hours now...but the first time I did it, it probably took about 10!


4 intersecting triangles





6 intersecting squares





6 intersecting pentagons





five intersecting tetrahedra







All together now