{"id":12426,"date":"2021-03-19T12:04:30","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T16:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/?p=12426"},"modified":"2021-03-19T12:06:56","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T16:06:56","slug":"the-math-of-origami-thomas-hull-93-97-on-the-study-of-patterns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/news\/the-math-of-origami-thomas-hull-93-97-on-the-study-of-patterns\/","title":{"rendered":"The Math of Origami: Thomas Hull \u201893 \u201897 On The Study of Patterns"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does math have to do with origami? Thomas Hull<\/a> \u201893 \u201897 can tell you. After earning both a master’s and a Ph.D. in mathematics<\/a> from URI, he is now an associate professor of mathematics at Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts, and is an internationally recognized expert on the math of origami. Reflecting on how his time at URI prepared him for his career — both the usual and slightly more unusual aspects of it — he <\/span>says he received a lot of great teaching experience and loved that within his program he could explore research in anything he wanted. As it turns out, this training and encouragement worked out perfectly for him to sharpen his life-long passion of origami. “At URI I always felt like the faculty had my back. It was very difficult, but my advisor and Ph.D. committee wanted me to succeed,” he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hull started doing origami when he was eight years old. \u201cIt was the simplicity of making something beautiful, like an origami crane or a complex spider, from just a square piece of paper with only folding, no cuts or glue, that intrigued me,” he says. “At its core, mathematics is really about the study of patterns, be they patterns in numbers, nature (like in physics), or creases made when we fold a piece of paper.  Putting these two passions together to study the math of origami was completely natural for me.\u201d He has created many different origami models, including the \u201cPhiZZ Unit\u201d or Pentagon-Hexagon-Zig-Zag Unit which can be used to make large geodesic dome structures. His most popular, the \u201cFive Intersecting Tetrahedra\u201d model which he came up with during his time at URI, was awarded one of the top 10 best origami models of all time in the year 2000. This model is also featured on the cover of his new book: \u201cOrigametry: Mathematical Methods in Paper Folding<\/a>.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mathematics<\/h2>

Here you\u2019ll become an experienced problem solver fluent in the language of the universe. Explore the endless possibilities.<\/p><\/div><\/div>

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Hull’s origami-math research has helped lead to a surge of interest in engineering and physics in using origami to design large folded structures for outer space exploration, like unfolding solar sails, and for making micro- and nano-scale origami robots. He has also received two major research grants from the National Science Foundation to fund his research in origami and math and has written other origami books, \u201cProject Origami: Activities for Exploring Mathematics\u201d and two origami books with no math: \u201cOrigami, Plain and Simple\u201d and \u201cRussian Origami.” Read more about Professor Hull’s research and work here<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

-Written by Samantha King ’21, Public Relations major<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What does math have to do with origami? Thomas Hull \u201893 \u201897 can tell you. He is now an associate professor of math — and an internationally recognized expert on the math of origami.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1089,"featured_media":12429,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[88],"class_list":["post-12426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-mathematics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1089"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12426"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12441,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12426\/revisions\/12441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/artsci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}