Young protesters, many wearing masks to disguise their identity, filled the open area of a Hong Kong shopping mall Sunday and folded paper “origami“ cranes in the latest twist in a pro-democracy movement that has stretched into a fourth month. They first chanted slogans and sang a song that has become their anthem, backed by a small group playing on woodwind and brass instruments through their masks. Many lined the balustrades of the three higher floors overlooking where others gathered in the wide space below. Transit authorities closed the two stations on the airport express train to guard against a possible disruption to the transportation hub. The Hong Kong International Airport Authority said that the train would operate only between the airport and the terminus station in the centre of the city on Sunday.

Nestlé Japan has announced it is launching recyclable paper packaging for its KitKat products in a bid to tackle plastic waste. Japan is the biggest market for KitKats and, according to reports, around 4m KitKat Minis are sold across the country every day. While they might be miniature in size, the impact of millions of plastic wrappers accumulating in landfill has been enough to persuade Nestlé to reconsider the way it packages its most popular product. As a result, the confectionery company is discontinuing the use of plastic packaging and replacing it with a paper version that is both environmentally friendly and fun. You see, the new wrappers aren’t made from any old paper. Ways to reduce your single-use plastic Show all 6 Plastic water bottle for a reusable beverage container Coffee cup for a Travel coffee mug Plastic bags for reusable cloth bags Coffee pods for a pot of coffee The updated versions will also come with instructions on how to make an origami paper crane to encourage customers to use their packaging to get creative instead of just throwing it away. As well as being creative and possibly kick-starting a new hobby, Nestlé has estimated that the new initiative will help to reduce the brand’s plastic waste by approximately 380 tonnes per year. The first phase in this new packaging roll-out will cover the KitKat Mini’s five top-selling flavours, including the original, matcha, and otona no amasa (meaning adult-level sweetness or less sweet). The initiative is part of the company’s commitment to only use 100 per cent recyclable and reusable packaging by 2025. Earlier this year, Nestlé launched a new snack bar that is sold in completely recyclable packaging which degrades in a marine environment within six months. Similarly, the brand also unveiled its first chocolate bar made without any refined sugar last month..

Geometry

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According to the National Center for Education Statistics in 2003, geometry was one area of weakness among American students. Origami has been found to strengthen an understanding of geometric concepts, formulas, and labels, making them come alive. Here’s how to use it in your class (PDF). By labeling an origami structure with length, width, and height, students will learn key terms and ways to describe a shape. You can use origami to determine the area by applying a formula to a real-world structure.

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Thinking Skills

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Origami excites other modalities of learning. It has been shown to improve spatial visualization skills using hands-on learning. Such skills allow children to comprehend, characterize, and construct their own vernacular for the world around them. In your class, find origami or geometric shapes in nature and then describe them with geometric terms.

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Fractions

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The concept of fractions is scary to lots of students. Folding paper can demonstrate the fractions in a tactile way. In your class, you can use origami to illustrate the concepts of one-half, one-third, or one-fourth by folding paper and asking how many folds students would need to make a certain shape. The act of folding the paper in half and in half again and so on can also be used to demonstrate the concept of infinity.

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Problem Solving

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Often in assignments, there is one set answer and one way to get there. Origami provides children an opportunity to solve something that isn't prescribed and gives them a chance to make friends with failure (i.e. trial and error). In your class, show a shape and ask students to come up with a way to make it. They may get the solution from various approaches. Remember, there is no wrong answer.

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Fun Science

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Origami is a fun way to explain physics concepts. A thin piece of paper is not very strong, but if you fold it like an accordion it will be. (Look at the side of a cardboard box for proof.) Bridges are based on this concept. Also, origami is a fun way to explain molecules. Many molecules have the shape of tetrahedrons and other polyhedra. Bonus: Just Plain Fun!

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I hope that I don't need to explain fun. Here are some activities (with diagrams) to keep those young hands and minds working.

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No Papering Over Origami's Benefits Children love origami as evidenced by how they are enamored with their first paper airplane, paper hat, or paper boat. And while we might not always think about it, origami surrounds us -- from envelopes, paper fans, and shirt folds to brochures and fancy towels. Origami envelops us (forgive the pun). Origami has been found to improve not only 3D perception and logical thinking (PDF), but also focus and concentration. Researchers have found that students who use origami in math perform better. In some ways, it is an untapped resource for supplementing math instruction and can be used for geometric construction, determining geometric and algebraic formulas, and increasing manual dexterity along the way. In addition to math, origami is a great way to merge science, technology, engineering, art, and math all together: STEAM. Origami is a STEAM Engine While schools are still catching up to the idea of origami as a STEAM engine (the merging of these disciplines), origami is already being used to solve tough problems in technology. Artists have teamed up with engineers to find the right folds for an airbag to be stored in a small space, so that it can be deployed in a fraction of a second. Additionally, the National Science Foundation, one of the government's largest funding agencies, has supported a few programs that link engineers with artists to use origami in designs. The ideas range from medical forceps to foldable plastic solar panels. And origami continues to amaze scientists with its presence in nature. Many beetles have wings that are bigger than their bodies. In fact they can be as much as two or three times as large. How are they able to do that? Their wings unfold in origami patterns. Insects are not alone. Leaf buds are folded in intricate ways that resemble origami art, too. Origami is all around us and can be a source of inspiration for children and adults alike. So no matter how you fold it, origami is a way to get children engaged in math, could improve their skills, and makes them appreciate the world around them more. When it comes to making lessons exciting, origami is above the fold.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how origami can be used to foster life and academic skills in struggling students in rural schools. At-risk students often lack the social, behavioral, study, self-management, academic and life skills to face their daily challenges. This paper describes: benefits of origami and its integration into various aspects of special education services, operational definitions of origami, diversity and disabilities, how origami is instructed, consideration for origami and types of disabilities, and cultural and linguistic impact in rural schools. A graphic instruction on how to paper fold a drinking cup is also provided.

Robert Lang ditched a career as a physicist to pursue origami full time. In WIRED's latest video, he reveals the tricks to folding complex shapes. BEFORE BECOMING A physicist, before being the editor in chief of the Journal of Quantum Electronics, before helping NASA design its largest space telescope, Robert Lang learned to fold paper. Already a numbers whiz at age six, Lang had trouble sitting still during math class. His teacher gave him an origami book to keep him occupied and Lang started to fold. He never stopped. He folded his way through high school and his undergraduate years at Caltech, decorating his shelves with a parade of tiny paper ants. He kept folding throughout his graduate work in applied physics, when in 1987, he made an actual-size cuckoo clock after a trip to Germany’s Black Forest. Eventually in 2001, Lang quit his science day jobs and committed to origami full time. The ancient art still requires artists to fashion their creations out of a single, square piece of paper, without tearing or gluing pieces together. But now, artists use mathematics to map out their incredibly detailed and lifelike paper creations. Lang has built musicians strumming guitars, a hummingbird drinking from a flower, a fish with 400 scales, and a female praying mantis devouring her mate. Lang’s work has been showcased in museums across the country, but his facility with folding doesn’t only yield beautiful sculptures. He’s helped design stents that collapse, so they’re easier to thread through arteries, and created computer programs that use origami to model how an airbag should be packed away in the dashboard. And he worked with NASA to create a telescope that folds up during launch and then unfurls once in space. “There are many ways to define complexity for origami,” says Lang in WIRED’s latest video. You could count the number of folds needed to finish a design, or tally the more advanced moves needed to create a certain shape. Lang uses a combination of these two metrics as he fashions and refashions a cicada, a classic origami shape. To the untrained eye, the first design looks vaguely bug-like: two wings poke out from behind a square head. Soon the creature gains eyes and antennae. Lang’s fingers carefully crease and manipulate the paper, following a series of intricate steps whose purpose isn’t immediately clear. Then, almost out of nowhere, six delicate legs appear. A segmented carapace emerges. Suddenly he’s holding a lifelike insect, ready to take flight. Check out the video above. You can also watch the full series on WIRED’s free app for Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, and Amazon Fire TV..

Saturday Night Live bit from last year when "Steve Bannon" (someone in a Skeletor-faced Death costume) sent "President Trump" (Alec Baldwin) to a smaller kids’ desk in the Oval Office? the name may not have been on the tip of your tongue then, but the toy that Trump/Baldwin begins to play with is called a Hoberman Sphere—and its creator has made scores of other contraptions just as mathematically complex. Like what? Well, for one Chuck Hoberman also worked on a 4,000-square-foot expanding video screen for U2’s 360° Tour and consulted on the iris-like opening of the roof at Mercedez-Benz Stadium. But after years of making geometrically-complex objects using joints and hinges, the artist-turned-engineer is pivoting to a different form of inspiration: origami. "Up until about 20 years ago, origami was a craft and an art," Hoberman says the latest episode of WIRED’s Obsessed. "Now it’s a topic of math, engineering, robotics, structures. It’s being studied in all of its full glory." To find out what he can do with large-scale origami, Hoberman cuts various pieces out of plastic and assembles them to see if they work together to make viable structures. Mathematics, he says, has shows "a flat sheet can be folded into any shape at all," and those shapes could be very beneficial to engineers. The thing that ties Hoberman’s well-known sphere to his new work is what he calls "transformative design." "Most designed objects are static through their lifetime and eventually disposed of," he says. "I'm looking for a different angle on it, which is: What if those objects were dynamic and alive and in movement around us?" In other words, his career has come full-circle. .