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I used to think that pop-ups would be too complex and time consuming, but now I realize the possibilities are limitless with quick, basic folds.

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I used to think that pop-ups would be too complex and time consuming, but now I realize the possibilities are limitless with quick, basic folds.

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Skulls are great for many different costumes, props or even just as Halloween decoration! This foam skull pattern collection includes 5 different designs for animal shaped skulls including a bird skull, wolf skull, dragon skull, ram skull (including separate horns) and saber tooth skull.

Just print them out, trace all pieces to foam and glue them together! All skulls also come with a sizing chart that tells you know what scale you need to print them out to get a certain size. Scroll down to see a tutorial video of how to set them together.
Please choose your correct printer paper size:

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Skulls are great for many different costumes, props or even just as Halloween decoration! This foam skull pattern collection includes 5 different designs for animal shaped skulls including a bird skull, wolf skull, dragon skull, ram skull (including separate horns) and saber tooth skull.

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I support in the library this year so it would be fun to make and illustrate some pop-up books with the kids.  I also found this resource:  https://www.sil.si.edu/pdf/FPPT_brochure.pdf

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I want to use the pop ups for my kinder students. We have a unit learning about different types of homes around the world. I want to then have my students make paper play homes. -Raven Cooper 

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I want to use the pop ups for my kinder students. We have a unit learning about different types of homes around the world. I want to then have my students make paper play homes. -Raven Cooper 

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Whimsical Windmills | Science & STEAM for Kids

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Colorful Origami Paper Art | Arts & Crafts for Kids

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How to: cut a rug out of paper - Flow Magazine

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Cutting a rug out of paper - you probably did this all the time as a kid. But how does it work again? We explain in My Keep Calm Daily Craft Book.

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Bauhaus 3D Paper Structure: Spiral Exercise

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What's The SECRET to Making a Perfect 3D Origami Cube?

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Origami ring with 5 modules (10) papers square and waterbomb base

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Origami ring with 5 modules (10) papers square and waterbomb base

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How to make a Modular Origami Star - Origami Step by Step (Easy)

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origami Spinner using 6 waterbomb base pieces

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origami Spinner using 6 waterbomb base pieces

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Origami ring with 8 modules using waterbomb base

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Origami ring with 8 modules using waterbomb base

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Constructing a community place like a playground.

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Incredible what a notecard can do!! 😍

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Folding as Tech

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Folding as Craft Tech

Posted by admin on Friday, December 7, 2018 · 4 Comments

"Modern industry saves us endless drudgery, but... it also bars us from taking part in the forming of material and leaves idle our sense of touch, and with it, those formative faculties that are stimulated by it."
-Anni Albers

Two things:
1.) I am organizing a new, experimental course at the School for Poetic Computation on the topic of folding-as-tech (rather than just a craft.)
and...
2.) I've made these ^^ foldable RISO prints, which you can buy!. They introduce the topic through super-satisfying paper folding activities (+ deformable, physically-animated typography.)

"Folding as tech" may initially sound like the niche pursuit of a handful of artists... wholly-unmoved by considerations of practicality*. It is actually an intimidatingly-wide topic with entry points from a multitude of disciplines. The notion of folding-as-tech spans centuries of nearly-forgotten tactile wisdom (ex.: origami) and the pressing demands of super new applications (ex: self-folding robots.) These are, for the most part, disciplines which never have a reason to talk to each other.
*no judgement, we're gonna do that too

The knowledge, techniques, and ideas surrounding this topic is so broad, in fact, that the course's co-organizer-computational origami artist, Robby Kraft-and I keep stumbling upon things and then wondering aloud: "Wait, so maaaaybe the entire world could have developed using flat-foldable technologies rather than mechanics?? (Like: if the Western world was less dominant during the Industrial Revolution and origamic techniques managed to proliferate?)" Would we ever, like... get to cars? Or would transport be 100% wriggling surfaces / 0% vehicle?

With resource depletion eminant (and its attendant human rights abuses increasingly being uncovered by the media), such thoughts are beginning to be thought outside of the context of art class. More thinkers are looking towards tech's non-dominant counter-histories for hints on where to go from now-ways that an alternative history of tech could have developed (and ways that parallel techs have developed covertly, under the radar as "craft".)

A good example is Daniela Rosner's new book Critical Fabulations...

Focusing on the development of computational systems, she takes on powerful narratives of innovation and technology shaped by the professional expertise that has become integral to the field's mounting status within the new industrial economy. To do so, she intervenes in legacies of design, expanding what is considered "design" to include long-silenced narratives of practice, and enhancing existing design methodologies based on these rediscovered inheritances. Drawing on discourses of feminist technoscience, she examines craftwork's contributions to computing innovation―how craftwork becomes hardware manufacturing, and how hardware manufacturing becomes craftwork.

Our class was formed in with this same spirit of questioning and reassessing what we can actually do with materials that are supposed to "do" nothing.

We are putting a bunch of multi-disciplinary people in a room together to learn from each other, but also, simply: to daydream freely without the confines of "the right way to do X." To ask what could be, if the history of technology had progressed different? If the world ran off of someone else's narratives.

And-of course-to figure out the range of things we can we build from this paper, tyvek, and cardboard.

In my own work, I've been using paper engineering* techniques to reimagine black box tech as lo-fi paper structures. Ones which tap into the laws of physics to make something happen, implicating the user in a direct collaboration with sound, light, time, or wind. My purpose with this is to connect people (mostly children) with the physicality of the world around them. (To open up the possibility of building something out of nothing by showing that the notion of "nothing" is a fallacy.)
*what pop-up book people do

Artist-researchers like Coralie Goucheron (who is also teaching in our course! woo!) are silkscreening circuits and touch-sensors onto paper, in order to make tech with significantly less e-waste.

In the world of research, auxetic structures made from folding patterns seem to really be in [academic] vogue right now. I spent a month this summer reading Nature, rifling through online journals, teaching a workshop at the Exploratorium, and making this risographed poster series to learn about the tech applications of auxetic folding systems...

Here's the miraculous Miura-Ori fold, for example:

This structure performs in two weird ways:
1.) It compresses up/down and L/R simultaneously. This is the quality that makes it a auxetic metamaterial, and is a behavior difficult to engineer with traditional mechanical parts
and
2.) If you press to deform one of its zig-zags inside-out, it will stop compressing in that area, but the pattern will continue to compress all around it. It is therefore a "programmable" surface in this respect.

The Miura-Ori's superpowers help explain why documentaries like " The Origami Revolution " are being made right now, as humans move into tinier and vaster spaces (designing for building both nano-tech and satellites!) There are simply contexts where you don't want nuts, bolts, gears, or other detachable parts that could become disconnected. Outer space and within the human body come to mind.

In these contexts, whenever function can be choreographed by manipulating homogeneous sheet material, it is preferable to heterogeneous, multi-part contraptions. In the case of nano-tech, folding enables function in contexts too microscopic for multiple materials to be used to enable function.

The Muiri-Ori is not the only folding pattern with secret tech superpowers. "An origami tunable metamaterial," from the Journal of Applied Physics explains how the traditional origami Waterbomb pattern might be modified to work in tunable applications (like as an antenna.)

There are additional applications for this shape in measuring acoustic transducer arrays which I will not pretend to understand. (Have tried. Feel free to explain it to me. ) 🙂
Other topics which we will definitely cover in class:
* Friend (and fellow Movable Book Society member) Matt Shlian used an absurdly-simple kirigami technique to radically reduce the materials required by solar panels, while improving their efficacy to track with the sun.

* And-as reported in the last year-origami-minded researchers finally "discovered" how ladybug wings, which are deployable structures, unfold. (And people are beginning to wonder what to build with this new knowledge... (!))

This is all to say, it's a **super-exciting** times in structure, topology, folding/unfolding problems, and paper right now. (Also: super-bad times elsewhere and paper folding is therapeutic, SO...)

You should definitely join us at SFPC in February! So far it is: me, Robby, Coralie, Robert Sabuda alum/pop-up mastermind Simon Azripe, and weaving/tech/computation genius Pam Liou. Additional teachers will be announced soon. Learn more here "

And if you're fresh out of pre-scored RISO prints about folding and tech, I got em "

No related posts.

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Posted by admin on Friday, December 7, 2018 · 4 Comments "Modern industry saves us endless drudgery, but... it also bars us from taking part in the forming of material and leaves idle our sense of touch, and with it, those formative faculties that are stimulated by it."

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Engineers study how forces act upon materials and structures to design machines that take into account how potential forces could be applied. Paper engineers design structures and mechanisms out of paper to solve real-world challenges.

Paper engineers develop designs for pop-up books, packaging, art, furniture, and much more. Kinetic Joy: Basic Principles of Paper Engineering explores the concepts behind the designs that bring paper to life and enable movement.

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Engineers study how forces act upon materials and structures to design machines that take into account how potential forces could be applied. Paper engineers design structures and mechanisms out of paper to solve real-world challenges. Paper engineers develop designs for pop-up books, packaging, art, furniture, and much more.

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Today's paper toy, Flextangles, is seriously the coolest paper puzzle we have ever made and judging by how many times you guys have downloaded our template you agree! Flextangles are part of our collaborative series STEAM POWER: Empowering kids to explore the world through creative projects. The theme for this installment is COMPUTE!

I've been itching to try making a flexagon ever since my friend Erica introduced me to them, so I decided it was high time we made one. If you aren't familiar with flexagons scroll down to find out more. I also decided to incorporate drawing into the project to add a level of manual "computation." Decorating these and then seeing how the patterns and colors translate once folded is a wonderful exercise in geometric planning.
This post contains affiliate links to products I love and recommend to my readers.
Materials

Instructions

Step One Download and print the template

Step Two Draw different designs in each row of triangular sides. Refer to the Pattern Guide on our template for the row layout. Be sure to connect the designs at the tick marks.

Step Three Cut along bold line.

Step Four Crease dashed lines face to face. Unfold.

Step Five Crease diagonal lines back to back. Unfold.

Step Six Gently fold paper to match dot to dot and form a tube.

Step Seven Add glue on tabs marked GLUE and press together.

Step Eight Add glue on end tabs and tuck into open end of tube. Press to seal. Let dry.

You're done! Go play!

Troubleshooting

A few people have written to me to express some challenges with this project. Here are my suggestions for troubleshooting.

If you find the end tabs keep popping out, add a small piece of tape on both sides of the joint.

Use tacky glue and be sure it is dry before rotating your Flextangle! The glued joints are under stress so they need to be secure.

Be sure to prime the Flextangle by rotating it slowly and popping out any unwanted bumps. The paper needs to flex a few times slowly before it rotates easily.

Make sure the folds are creased well. I burnish the fold with the back of my thumb. When using card stock you may want to burnish the folds using your fingernail.

Tips

Prime your flexagon by rotating it gently at first and pushing out any unwanted folds. Once it's been rotated a few times it will loosen up.

Standard printer paper makes the easiest to fold flexagons but they are not the most durable. Cardstock makes for more durable flexagons but you will need to really crease the fold lines or the model will be stiff.

Younger children don't have to pay attention to the tick marks, they will just enjoy coloring the template like my daughter did!

About Flexagons and Zentangle

Flexagons are paper models that can be flexed to reveal hidden faces. They were originally created by Princeton graduate student Arthur Stone in 1939 and became a huge fad when Martin Gardner published them in The Scientific American years later. There are an incredible number of flexagon types. To try some other versions go here.

The model we have made here today is nicknamed a Kaleidocyle and because it's not flat I'm not entirely sure it can be classified as a flexagon, but it certainly is loads of fun!

Zentangle is a trademarked method of drawing patterns in a deliberate, meditative manner. Zentangle is based on a square so our Flextangles are really only inspired by this method and not a true example of this drawing technique. If you want to now more about drawing Zentangle hop over and check out their site!

Looks Like

Martin Gardner. Martin Gardner was an author who wrote a column for The Scientific American. His first article for the magazine was about Flexagons and was published in 1956. It was a huge hit and the magazine asked him to write an ongoing column called Mathematical Games, which he continued until 1981. Besides being a columnist and author he was an expert on Lewis Carroll and held some strong beliefs about pseudoscience and more. You can read all about his ideas here
If FLEXTANGLES gets you hooked on paper toys, we've got more......
Check out our PAPER TOYS PLAY PACK HERE

More from the STEAM Series:

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Make this paper toy and be mesmerized by the colorful action! Get the template and instructions on Babble Dabble Do.

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Make a Pop-Up Box From the book
The Pocket Paper Engineer, Volume 2

The pop-up box is a floating platform with sides. Its top serves as the platform, held up by a strong center tab concealed inside. The two side tabs of the platform are the sides of the box itself.

To start this project, download the PDF file of the box pattern and cut it out along the outer solid black lines. Gently score and fold along the broken lines. (Don't worry if the folds are mountains or valleys. You can always reverse them later). Keep the pattern lines on the outside as you construct the box so you can refer to them as you go.

Remember, solid black lines are cut lines, broken lines are fold lines, and diagonally slashed areas are glue spots.

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Make a Pop-Up with Popular Kinetics Press

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Make a Pop-Up Box From the book The Pocket Paper Engineer, Volume 2 The pop-up box is a floating platform with sides. Its top serves as the platform, held up by a strong center tab concealed inside. The two side tabs of the platform are the sides of the box itself.

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movable vs. pop up

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pop-up "paper engineering" "children's book" design art illustration artist author creator

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With scissors and paper, artist Béatrice Coron creates intricate worlds, cities and countries, heavens and hells. Striding onstage in a glorious cape cut from Tyvek, she describes her creative process and the way her stories develop from snips and slices.

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Duncan Birmingham

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Pop up! a manual of paper mechanisms - duncan birmingham (tarquin books) [popup, papercraft, paper engineering, movable books] 2

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Title Slide of Pop up! a manual of paper mechanisms - duncan birmingham (tarquin books) [popup, papercraft, paper engineering, movable books] 2

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Techtonic plates pop up book

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Making a TED-Ed Lesson: Bringing a pop-up book to life

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I did a unit several years ago with 9th grade where they used paper engineering to make their own templates of a building. We used white cardstock. We first began with several templates I found online (I'll try and find the template links it's been a while). They practiced skills with the different cuts/folds (I called them mountains and valleys). As high school students they were practicing using xacto knives to prepare for their upper level design classes. Summatively, students had to work through problem solving HOW too design a template 2D and make it become 3D. I am considering doing a similar project like this again this year. I scaffolded and differentiated so some students were able to do this easily from scratch without using any sort of template, just an image of the building they selected, some students needed a pre-existing template as a starting point and modified and some students needed to work from a direct template with making small additions on their own!

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This resource was created as part of the Science Friday Educator Collaborative. If you are implementing this in the classroom, please check out the Educator's Guide for tips for classroom use.

How does the dinosaur pop out of the page? Is it magic? Hint: it's not magic-it's math and engineering! Pop-up book artists like Matthew Reinhart, who created the dinosaur above, combine art with principles of math and engineering to design pop-up books that delight readers of all ages. It doesn't just stop there. The principles of pop-ups transcend disciplines: they have inspired the development of nanodevices that manipulate light, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), paper robots, and furniture.

In this activity, you will learn how to make pop-ups by building two different pop-up mechanisms, pick out mathematical patterns that will help you predict pop-up motion, and then apply those ideas to build a card inspired by your favorite Science Friday story.

Using scissors, tape, and reams of creativity, Matthew Reinhart engineers paper to bend, fold, and transform into fantastic creatures, structures and locales. By adjusting the angles of folds and the depth of layers, Reinhart animates his subjects to tell dramatic stories that literally pop off the page. Watch to see how Reinhart creates his amazing feats of paper engineering.
We will use short time-stamped clips from this video throughout the resource to help you build your paper engineering skills!
Hey educators! How has the school year been for you? Tell SciFri your stories and feedback for our future STEM education coverage in a short survey!

Let's Explore Some Pops

How do pop-ups work? How does Reinhart get his pop-ups to pop, or rise, so high off the page? Like skyscrapers and bridges, pop-ups need specially engineered supports. When used on the base of a card, these supports provide a solid foundation that carries and distributes the forces that are created by the moving attachments. Supports that are built on top of each other work together to increase the strength of the card so attachments can reach above and beyond the edges of the page. Look carefully at Reinhart's pop-ups.

Can you find the support structures?

In engineering, triangles are frequently used to distribute forces and increase the strength of structures like skyscrapers, buildings, and bridges. Do you see any triangles? What other shapes do you notice? Are there differences based on the size or direction of the pop-up?

It's Time To Build Some Popup Cards!

Do you recognize this object? It's a pop-up card! Well, it's the foundation of a pop-up card-without any decorations. Watch how all the shapes move together when the card is opened and closed. What could we turn this card into? A dinosaur, like the one in Matthew Reinhart's video, perhaps?

In the time-stamped version of the video below, Reinhart explains two of the support structures that he frequently uses, the v-fold and layer. These support structures are called pop-up mechanisms -elements that cause movement on the surface of the page. In this activity, you will build v-fold mechanisms and explore the geometry that makes them pop. You will explore the layer mechanism in a later activity.

Materials
Remember to be careful when using sharp tools and always cut on a cutting mat or other layer to protect your table. Note: Copy paper can be used in lieu of cardstock, but is more likely to tear if pop-ups are repositioned.
Prepare And Build Your First Pop-up Card

1. Cut out the shapes from the Pop-up Template by cutting along the solid lines. On the Card Template, create two cards by cutting along the labeled cut line. Fold each card and popup back-and-forth along the dotted lines so that each crease is sharp. At the end of this step, you should have four cards and eight shapes. These eight shapes will be our pop-ups, and we will refer to them by the number printed on the shape. Tip: Stack your cards and pop-ups by type for later work.

2. Use a protractor to measure angles A and B on one copy of popups #1, #2, and #3. Write each angle measurement in Table I of your Pop-up Observation Sheet. How are angles A and B on each pop-up related? Do you notice a pattern?

Build Your Remaining Pop-ups

Now that you've built your first pop-up card, grab your remaining stacks of cards. Follow the directions below to build three different pop-up cards. As you work, record your measurements in Table II of the Pop-up Observation Sheet.

Observe

Does every pop-up stay inside the card when the card is closed?

How do the measures of angles C1 and D1 compare?

How do the measures of angles C2 and D2 compare?

How do line 1 and line 2 make each pop-up look different?

When finished, your three pop-up cards should look something like this:
Note: You will have one extra copy of Card 2, this is for later.
Develop Your Theory: How Do Pop-ups Work?

Mathematicians, like scientists, use observations to make educated guesses. In mathematics, these educated guesses are called conjectures. Let's look at your Pop-up Observation Sheet and your three completed cards to make conjectures about the geometry that makes v-fold mechanisms pop. Start by focusing on symmetry. Parts of objects have symmetry when one part has the same size and shape as another after a flip, turn, or slide.

Where do you notice symmetry on your pop-ups and cards? What data from Table I or Table II supports your observations?

Can you describe how symmetry might be important to the movement of the pop-ups?

Your conjectures about symmetry might look something like this:

V-folds have a line of symmetry. The dotted line on each v-fold mechanism is a line of symmetry. This explains why angles A and B on each v-fold mechanism have the same measure-the line of symmetry divides each pop-up into two parts of the same size and shape.

Cards have a line of symmetry. The center fold of the card is a line of symmetry. Closing the card reflects line 1 to the other side of the card, making angles C and and D the same measure.

On pop-ups, the line of symmetry of the card and the v-fold are aligned. When we placed our v-folds on the card, the line of symmetry of the v-fold was directly above the center fold of the card. When the two lines of symmetry are aligned, the card and pop-up open and close together.

Other ideas you should think about:

What could be controlling the height of a pop-up?

If a pop-up extends outside the closed card, what changes could you make to the pop-up or card to keep the pop-up inside the card?

What Else You Can Do?

Keeping these observations in mind, play around with the way the v-fold mechanisms are attached to your three cards. You might try to re-attach the pop-ups to lines that are drawn at different angles or lines that extend in a different direction from the center of the card. You might change the size or shape of the pop-up. You might even try other ways to attach the pop-up to the card. As you play, try to:

Alter the height of a pop-up.

Make a large part of a pop-up extend outside the closed card.

Make two pop-ups crash into each other as the card opens or closes.

Observe what happens when you place a pop-up so that its fold is not directly above the center of the card.

V-folds are just one of the many types of mechanisms used by pop-up artists. In the next activity, we will use a layer mechanism to help build up our pop-up. Watch the video below to learn how to create simple layers.

Combining Popups

Most of the scenes in a pop-up book are built using multiple pop-up mechanisms that work together to create height and motion across two pages.

Any pop-up mechanism that is taped to a card creates a fold at the taped edge that can power another mechanism. By attaching pop-ups to each other, you can create supports for wider and taller designs. Let's try it!

Materials

Three completed pop-up cards from the previous activity

One copy of pop-up #4 from your stack of pop-ups

Scissors

Artist/drafting tape or transparent tape.

Procedure
What shape does pop-up #4 create?
You probably noticed that this pop-up has a different shape than the others-it looks more like a box. This is the layer, or parallelogram, mechanism. They don't have to be attached to another pop-up. They can also be attached directly to the card.
What could pop-up #3 be used for? Where could you add other v-fold or layer mechanisms to make your pop-ups taller or wider?
Experiment by attaching more pop-ups to others. Use pop-ups from the Pop-up Template or cut out some of your own in similar shapes and custom sizes. Don't forget to incorporate things you learned during your experimentation with v-folds!

How Does Paper Move When Attached To A Popup Mechanism?

As Reinhart explained, different pop-up configurations cause attachments to move differently. Let's experiment with our cards.

Materials

Three completed pop-up cards from the previous activities

Colored paper (e.g., construction, copy paper)

Scissors

Artist/drafting tape or transparent tape

Double-sided tape or adhesive dots

Procedure

1. Cut rectangles, squares, circles, and other shapes out of copy or construction paper. Use double-sided tape to attach the shapes to any of your pop-up mechanisms.

2. Open and close the card and observe how the shapes move. Move or trim shapes that extend outside the card.

What is the largest or longest shape that can be attached to a pop-up before it extends from the card?

Do some attached shapes move more than others? How does a shape's movement change if you connect it to a different position on the pop-up?

Your answers to these questions will vary based on the size of the shape, the type of pop-up, and the location of the pop-up on the card. Try cutting pictures out of magazines and see how you might make those images move and pop off the page.

Attachments are not the only way to tell a story - the mechanism can tell a story, too. You can cut a pop-up to slightly alter its shape or draw on it to change its look. It is best to do this before attaching the pop-up to the page. Use your imagination!

Engineering Your Perfect Pop

Get ready to put together everything you learned about pop-ups! Your challenge: choose a Science Friday story and use art, math, and engineering to create a pop-up that responds to or is inspired by the story. Maybe you want to create a pop-up card that tells a story. Great! Perhaps you prefer to invent a device that uses pop-up principles to solve a problem. Awesome! The choice is yours.

Materials

At least four sheets of cardstock (You can use copy paper, but it is more likely to tear when repositioning.)

Scissors

Artists tape or transparent tape

Double-sided tape or adhesive dots

Colored copy paper or construction paper

Markers, crayons, or colored pencils

Engineering Your Perfect Pop Checklist

Optional: an additional copy of the Pop-up Template, and craft knife (be careful when using sharp tools and always cut on a cutting mat).

When solving a problem, it's important to follow a design process. As a paper engineer, you are going to break up your work into design process stages. Keep in mind that the design process is not linear. As you move from one stage to the next, you may find that you need to revisit a previous stage. Use the Engineering Your Perfect Pop Checklist as you work through the design process.

Get inspired by a story!

Here's a selection of Science Friday stories you can choose from:

Interested in diving deeper to make a bigger global impact? Align your pop-up creation with one of the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development. Brainstorm how pop-ups could be used to inexpensively solve a problem relating to the human health and environmental goals that are championed by the United Nations. As an example, get inspired by the Prakash lab and simplicity by design, especially the Foldscope, an inexpensive microscope that is made from cut, folded, and assembled paper.

Analyze your story!

What about the resource motivates or inspires you? What do the people in the story need? What is the problem they are dealing with? How might pop-ups be used to help solve your selected issue or to tell your story? Identify information that might inform your design. Define the idea you plan to convey with your pop-up or the problem you want to solve.
The next two stages, Design and Test, are closely linked. You will spend a lot of time moving between these stages until your pop-up device or card works correctly. Remember that you don't have to wait to test until you have all the pieces in place. You should test and adjust as you go.
Design: Let the engineering begin!

Create a rough sketch of the layout of your card. Where will you place and combine mechanisms? Do you need to learn more building techniques? What resources will you use to learn them?

Build your design on a foundation that is made from a piece of 8.5" x 11" cardstock or copy paper, folded in half. For the pop-ups, either make copies of the Pop-up Template or cut your own similar shaped and custom sized pop-ups.

Check out the resources below to learn different techniques for creating pop-ups.

Test: Try out the mechanics of your card.

Does your prototype open and close smoothly? Do all pieces fold flat when the card is closed? Do all decorations stay inside the card when it is closed? Does the card convey your idea or address the issue you selected?

Show Off Your Creation

It's time to show off your hard work! Refer to your Engineering Your Perfect Pop Checklist as you prepare your presentation. Share pictures of your work with Science Friday on Twitter or Instagram, using the hashtag: #SciFriPop.

Take a few minutes to reflect on your experience. What did you learn? What challenges did you face? How did you overcome them? What would you do differently next time? What would you like to learn more about?

Now that you've explored the basics of pop-ups, keep experimenting and creating more perfect pops!

Resources

Want to learn how to make, cut out, and combine other types of pop-up mechanisms? Take a few of Matthew Reinhart's Pop-up School Lessons or Pop-up Master Classes or head to pop-up artist Duncan Birmingham's YouTube channel.

Interested in exploring the geometry of more pop-up mechanisms? Pop-up design and paper mechanics by pop-up artist Duncan Birmingham beautifully explains the theory of pop-ups and shows how to create more complex mechanisms, step-by-step or you can take check Matthew Reinhart's Pop-up School on YouTube or Duncan Birmingham's channel.

Want to know how pop-up books are manufactured? This video shows how Matthew Reinhart designed a page in one of his books, and this video explains how a pop-up page is printed and assembled in a factory.

Check out kirigami, the Japanese art of paper cutting. This art form has inspired some recent engineering innovations.

Standards

HS-ETS1-2 Engineering Design: Design a solution to a complex real-world problem by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable problems that can be solved through engineering.

MS-ETS-1 Engineering Design: Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.HSG.MG.A.3: Apply geometric methods to solve design problems (e.g., designing an object or structure to satisfy physical constraints or minimize cost; working with typographic grid systems based on ratios).

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP3: Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP4: Model with mathematics.

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP5: Use appropriate tools strategically.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.11-12.3: Follow precisely a complex multistep procedure when carrying out experiments, taking measurements, or performing technical tasks; analyze the specific results based on explanations in the text.

Special Thanks To:
Josh Back, for filming all of the videos
Catherine Phillips, for testing the lesson and providing feedback
Josh Back, Alex Back, and Dave Back for testing revision after revision of this activity

Credits:
Written by Jamie Back
Mentored by Katharine Hinkle
Review by Science Friday Educator Collaborative Cohort 6
Editing by Shirley Campbell, Xochitl Garcia, and Katharine Hinkle
Digital Production by Xochitl Garcia

Educator's Toolbox

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This resource was created as part of the Science Friday Educator Collaborative. If you are implementing this in the classroom, please check out the Educator's Guide for tips for classroom use. How does the dinosaur pop out of the page? Is it magic? Hint: it's not magic-it's math and engineering!

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Layers and V folds

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Pop-Up Tutorial 02 - Paralelogramos y Triángulos

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Multiple layers could be used to create a setting or space (cityscape, landscape, rooms, etc). This could be done collaboratively on a large scale (if distancing is monitored).

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Summary
Students learn about applied forces as they create pop-up-books - the art of paper engineering. They also learn the basic steps of the engineering design process.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Engineering Connection

Just like forces travel from your hand to move an object, engineers want forces to "travel" in their designs as well. For example, in the construction of buildings and bridges, engineers make sure the forces acting upon the structures (people, washing machines, trucks, wind, snow, etc.) will be safely transferred to foundations in the ground. During the engineering design process, they do this by adding up all the potential forces that could be applied to a structure and drawing free-body diagrams - drawings that help to visualize how forces act upon an object - to ensure that the structure will not collapse.

Learning Objectives

After this activity, students should be able to:

Define a force and identify several forces in their environment.

Understand how forces work in a pop-up book.

Use brainstorming as a means to generate ideas for a work of art.

Use the engineering design process to create a product for a client..

Educational Standards

Each TeachEngineering lesson or activity is correlated to one or more K-12 science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) educational standards.

All 100,000+ K-12 STEM standards covered in TeachEngineering are collected, maintained and packaged by the Achievement Standards Network (ASN), a project of D2L (www.achievementstandards.org).

In the ASN, standards are hierarchically structured: first by source; e.g., by state; within source by type; e.g., science or mathematics; within type by subtype, then by grade, etc.

NGSS Performance Expectation

Click to view other curriculum aligned to this Performance Expectation

This activity focuses on the following Three Dimensional Learning aspects of NGSS:

Science & Engineering Practices

Disciplinary Core Ideas

Crosscutting Concepts

Evaluate competing design solutions based on jointly developed and agreed-upon design criteria.

Alignment agreement:

There are systematic processes for evaluating solutions with respect to how well they meet the criteria and constraints of a problem.

Alignment agreement:

Suggest an alignment not listed above

Materials List

Each group needs:

white printer paper (regular 8.5 x 11-inch size)

colored construction paper

scissors

pens

markers

rule

For the entire class to share:

several pop-up or movable books from the library or home

stapler (or needle and thread to stitch through several sheets of paper)

How to Make Tabs (attachment)

How to Make Flaps (attachment)

Worksheets and Attachments
Visit [www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/cub_art_lesson01_activity2] to print or download.

Introduction/Motivation

History of Paper Engineering (As modified from University of Northern Texas)

Have you ever read a pop-up book? How do they work? When were they invented?

The first movable books were created for educational purposes as early as the 15th century, almost 500 years ago! One of the first books was an anatomy book that used flaps for each layer of the human body. This book was created in 1553 by Andreas Vesalius. People start creating movable books for recreational purposes hundreds of years later. This time, the books used flaps to reveal different adventure scenes in a story.

During the 19th century, the London publishing house of S. & J. Fuller mass-produced the first paper dolls. Lotha Meggendorfer, a German artist created the first multiple and simultaneously moving parts book. He used an intricate system of copper wires and paper tabs to create this effect. Three-dimensional books, in which the images stood up from the pages, were created after 1929.

Engineers and artists think about forces when designing or building something. What is a force? (Answer: A push or pull on an object.) Not all forces occur naturally like wind and gravity. People can create forces using energy that originates from the food they eat. This occurs when we push someone on a swing, use our feet to push a skateboard or pull someone in a wagon. When we read pop-up books we apply very small forces (pushes or pulls) to tabs and flaps to make them move.

Engineers and artists take into consideration the impact of manmade forces on an object they design, as well as natural ones. For example, is it important for an engineer to consider the impact of the accumulated weight of many people as they walk across a floor on the second story of a building? Even the smallest forces need to be taken into account. Any push or pull that affects the balance of a structure, large or small, must be thought about by engineers and artists during the design and creation process. In making pop-up or moving books, the creators are called "paper engineers."
The Engineering Design Process
Engineers design and build all types of structures, systems and products that are important in our everyday lives. The engineering design process is a series of steps that engineering teams use to guide them as they solve problems:

1. Identify the need: What is the problem? What do I want to do? What are the project requirements? What are the limitations? Who is the customer? What is the goal? Gather information and research what others have done.

2. Research the problem. What products or solutions already exist? What technologies might be adaptable to the need?

3. Brainstorm and develop solutions: Imagine and brainstorm ideas. Be creative. Investigate existing technologies and methods to use. Explore, compare and analyze many possible solutions.

4. Plan by selecting a promising solution: Select the most promising idea. Draw a diagram of your idea. How will it work? What materials and tools are needed? How will you test it to make sure it works?

5. Create a prototype: Assign team tasks. Build a prototype.

6. Test and evaluate: Does it work? Does it solve the need? Communicate the results and get feedback.

7. Improve and redesign: Discuss how you could improve your solution. Make revisions. Draw new designs. Iterate your design to make your product the best it can be.
And now, REPEAT!

Engineers use their science and math knowledge to explore all possible options and compare many design ideas. This is called open-ended design because when you start to solve a problem, you don't know what the best solution will be. The process is cyclical and may begin at, and return to, any step.

The use of prototypes, or early versions of the design (or a model or mock-up) helps the design process by improving the understanding of the problem, identifying missing requirements, evaluating design objectives and product features, and getting feedback from others.

Engineers select the solution that best uses the available resources and best meets the project's requirements. They consider many factors: Cost to make and use, quality, reliability, safety, functionality, ease of use, aesthetics, ethics, social impact, maintainability, testability, manufacturability.

In this activity (or the next time you decide to design/build something from scratch) think about the engineering design process. It helps you think through all aspects of a problem to find a good solution.

Procedure

This activity is suggested to take place during two, one-hour class periods on two different days. Day 1 is for research, writing, drawing, brainstorming, planning and organizing. Day 2 is for construction of the pop-up book.

Before the Activity

Gather materials and bring to class example pop-up books from the library or home.

Divide the class into teams of two students each.

Student research. Have the student teams browse through the pop-up books, paying careful attention to why and how parts of the book move, and where the forces are applied.

The process. Write on the board the main steps in the engineering design process, and discuss with the students.

With the Students

1. On Day 1, start a discussion about pop-up books by asking if anyone has read a pop-up book. Do you know how they work? Take guesses on when they were first invented. (Answer: 500 years ago.) Present the engineering challenge. To create a successful pop-up book with at least 5 pages using only the materials available within the time alloted.

2. Information gathering. List on the board all the different design techniques found in the example pop-up books. (Possible techniques: Revolving disks, push/pull tabs, lifts/flaps.) Also note that some books create movement only by the reader moving a disk, tab or flap, while others move simply with the motion of turning a page.

3. Understand the science. Review with the students how the forces travel from the student's hands along the tabs or through the book pages to cause movement. It may be helpful to draw arrows that represent these forces on the board (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. A gentle force with a hand causes movement in a pop-up book.

1. With the remaining class time, have the student teams write a short story that they will illustrate in their pop-up book. Decide if the book will be a simple children's story created for a child they know, or perhaps a comic book designed for themselves. The story length can be five sentences to five pages. Remind students that some books have no words or very few words; paper engineers design books so the pictures (illustrations and movement) tell the story.

2. An important part of the engineering design process is creating a diagram of your design. This step helps make the project real so decisions can be made and refined for a better end product. Have the students divide their story into approximately five pages, and draw rough sketches (words and pictures) to lay out each page.

3. Brainstorming is important in the engineering design process. Working in a team helps everyone come up with creative ideas. Have the students brainstorm unique ways to make their pictures move. Which illustrations will move? In what way? What movement(s) help to tell the story best? Find ideas in the example pop-up books and talk with other students about possible ideas. Brainstorm creative and silly ideas that use the materials available.

4. Planning ahead is a very important part of the engineering design process. Why? (Answers: It helps with the collection of materials, prevents the wasting of materials, saves time during the construction phase, and keeps projects organized so other people can understand what is going on.) Have the students plan how they will make some of their illustrations move. What will be on the page background? What will be on the flap or tabs? What will be the tab/flap shapes? Where will be the folds? How will the moving pieces be attached? Practice with a prototype (or mock-up), until it works the way you want. Use the suggestions provided in the How to Make Tabs and How to Make Flaps attachments.

5. On Day 2, continue with the pop-up book making process. After the students have shown they have a good grasp on how they want to complete their project, they can begin the construction phase.

6. Share the construction tasks among the team members. The first step is to create the base pages of the book. Have each student team figure out how many pieces of paper they need based on the number of finished pages in their book when the 8.5 x 11" paper is folded in half. Plan to include a cover page and a title page. For instance if a story is six pages long, the team needs three pieces of copy paper for the story, one piece for the title page and one piece of colored construction paper for the cover.

7. Have students stack their book page papers, placing the construction piece on the bottom (see Figure 2).

8. Next, have students fold the stack of papers in half so that the construction paper is on the outside, creating a front and back cover (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Construction details for the pop-up book.

1. To make a binding, either staple the fold of the book, or use a needle and thread to stitch the pages together (see Figure 2).

2. Next, the students may proceed to add the story, illustrations and moving parts to the blank book. Create a title page that includes the components found on the title page of other books (title, author(s), illustrator(s), location, date).

3. When all students have completed their books, have each team present them to the class. They should be able to describe the type of forces that cause their book parts to move. How well did each team do with regards to criteria and constraint of the challenge? Discuss the creative ideas used in the pop-up books. Do they function well? Do they have any ideas for improvement? Who is the end user of their book? How did the steps of the engineering design process work for your team? Deliver the pop-up books to younger students and see how they are received.

Vocabulary/Definitions

brainstorming: A method of shared problem solving in which all members of a group quickly and spontaneously contribute many ideas.

design: To plan out in systematic, often graphic form. To create for a particular purpose or effect. Design a building.

engineering design: The process of devising a system, component or process to meet desired needs. (Source: Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc.)

engineering design process: A decision-making process used by engineers. Combines an understanding of basic sciences, mathematics and engineering sciences to use available resources (material, people) to meet a desired goal, usually resulting in a product or system. (Source: The Design Process, Micron Technology, Inc., http://www.micron.com/students/engineer/design.html)

force: A push or a pull on an object.

kinetic: Of, relating to, or produced by motion.

mock-up: A layout of printed matter, used for demonstration, study or testing.

prototype: A first attempt or early model of a new product or creation. May be revised many times.

Assessment

Pre-Activity Assessment

Discussion Questions: Ask the students and discuss as a class:

Who has read a pop-up book? (Show of hands.)

How do pop-up books work? (Examine carefully.)

When were pop-up books invented? (Answer: Almost 500 years ago.)

How do forces cause movement in a pop-up book? (Review with the students the forces that cause movement. It may be helpful to draw on the board arrows that represent these forces.)

How might a "paper engineer" go about designing a pop-up book? What steps? (Review the engineering design process steps.)

Activity Embedded Assessment

Brainstorming: As a class, have the students engage in open discussion to come up with unique ways to make their book illustrations move. Remind students that engineers use brainstorming all the time to come up with great ideas. In brainstorming, no idea or suggestion is "silly." All ideas should be respectfully heard. Take an uncritical position, encourage wild ideas and discourage criticism of ideas. Have them raise their hands to respond. List their ideas on the board so they can refer to them as the teams plan their books.

Critical Thinking: Ask the students to think about the constraints of the problem. What is limiting them? Do the types of materials matter? Would they prefer something else? How about time? Could they have used more? Remind them that the books should function. Are some movements (sliding, spinning of "paper puppets") more difficult than others?

Post-Activity Assessment

Presentation: When all the student teams have completed their pop-up books, have them present to the class. They should be able to explain the path that a force takes to cause their books to move. Have students comment on: Who is the end-user of their book? How did they select the pop-up ideas they used? How well do the pop-ups function? Do they have any ideas for improvement? How did using the steps of the engineering design process work for their team?

Recap Questions: As a class, ask students to review with you the steps in the engineering design process. (Answers: Understand the need, brainstorm and design, plan, create, improve. See details in the Introduction/Motivation section.)

Safety Issues

Students should be careful when handling scissors.

If needle and thread are used, students should be careful when handling the needles.

Troubleshooting Tips

Since some students get frustrated coming up with their own designs, it may be helpful to check out some "how-to make your own pop-up books" from the library or search the Internet for helpful ideas to supply to students. See the Reference section for some book suggestions.

Activity Extensions

Ask the students where else engineers want forces to "travel." For example, in the construction of buildings and bridges, engineers want to make sure the forces (people, desks, cars, snow, wind, weight of the walls and roof, etc.) can be safely transferred to solid foundations. They do this by adding up all the potential forces that could be applied to a structure and drawing free-body diagrams - drawings that help visualize how forces act upon an object, This method helps engineers design structures that do not collapse under the impact of many forces. Ask students to research free-body diagrams on the Internet and report back to class with an example.

Have the student research the history of pop-up books and write a one-page paper.

Have the students brainstorm about other art forms that use moving pieces. For homework, have them create a piece of moving art, and explain which forces make it move and why.

Invite a "paper engineer" to speak to your class.

Activity Scaling

For younger students (grades 3-4), print out instructions from one of the how-to books and stick to simpler flap designs.

References

Dictionary.com. Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. Accessed February 9, 2005. (Source of vocabulary definitions, with some adaptation) http://www.dictionary.com

Engineering, Is It You? The Design Process. Micron Technology, Inc.. Accessed February 8, 2005. http://www.micron.com/students/engineer/design.html

Hiner, Mark. Paper Engineering for Pop-Up Books and Cards. Stradbroke. Diss. Norfolk, England: Tarquin Publications, 1986.

Hiner, Mark. Pop-up Books and Paper Engineering. Updated 2002. Mark Hiner, Paper Engineer. Accessed February 8, 2005. (Great resource) http://www.markhiner.co.uk/

Irvine, Joan. How to Make Pop-Ups. Illustrated by Barbara Reid. Toronto, Canada: Kids Can Press, 1987 or New York, NY: William Morrow & Co, 1988. Also see Joan Irvine Children's Books at http://www.makersgallery.com/joanirvine/books.html

Jackson, Paul. The Pop-Up Book: Step-by-Step Instructions for Creating Over 100 Original Paper Projects. New York, NY: Owl Books, 1994.

Montanaro, Ann. A Concise History of Pop-up and Movable Books. Updated 2004. The POP-UP World of Ann Montanaro, Rutgers University Libraries, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Accessed April 1, 2004. (A World Wide Web exhibition that includes images an amazing pop-up book collection) http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/libs/scua/montanar/p-intro.htm

Pop-up and Movable Books: A Tour through Their History, Introduction: A Brief History of Early Movable Books. University of Northern Texas Libraries. Accessed February 8, 2005. http://www.library.unt.edu/rarebooks/exhibits/popup2/introduction.htm

Copyright © 2005 by Regents of the University of Colorado.

Contributors Natalie Mach; Malinda Schaefer Zarske; Denise W. Carlson

Supporting Program Integrated Teaching and Learning Program, College of Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder

Acknowledgements

The contents of this digital library curriculum were developed under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), U.S. Department of Education and National Science Foundation GK-12 grant no. 0338326. However, these contents do not necessarily represent the policies of the Department of Education or National Science Foundation, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

Last modified: January 23, 2021

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Students learn about applied forces as they create pop-up-books - the art of paper engineering. They also learn the basic steps of the engineering design process. This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Just like forces travel from your hand to move an object, engineers want forces to "travel" in their designs as well.

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90, acute and obtuse