The Miura Fold

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The Miura fold is a method of folding a flat surface such as a sheet of paper into a smaller area. The fold is named for its inventor, Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura.

Why it is awesome?

The Miura fold is a form of rigid origami, meaning that the fold can be carried out by a continuous motion in which, at each step, each parallelogram is completely flat.

This property allows it to be used to fold surfaces made of rigid materials; for instance, it has been used to simulate large solar panel arrays for space satellites in the Japanese space program.

The fold can also be unpacked in just one motion by pulling on opposite ends of the folded material, and likewise folded again by pushing the two ends back together.

In the application to solar arrays, this property reduces the number of motors required to unfold this shape, reducing the overall weight and complexity of the mechanism.

Other cool stuff.

Miura folded maps. Snug it into your pocket when not in need and open it up in style when you are lost !

(Source : http://www.bun-sho-do.co.jp/english/nextg/miura-fold/ , wikipedia )

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How does an eraser work?

What happens when you write?

Although we call the black stuff in pencils “lead,” it’s not the real metal known as lead.It’s actually a mineral called “graphite,” which is made up of carbon. When you write with a pencil, graphite particles from the pencil rub off and stick to the fibers of the paper you’re writing on.

What do erasers do?

When you rub an eraser across a pencil mark, the abrasives in the eraser gently scratch the surface fibers of the paper to loosen the graphite particles. The softeners in the eraser help to prevent the paper from tearing. The sticky rubber in the eraser grabs and holds on to the graphite particles. 

The physics.

Erasers work because of friction.

As the abrasives in your eraser are rubbed against paper, friction produces heat, which helps the rubber become sticky enough to hold onto the graphite particles. As the rubber grabs the graphite particles, small pieces of combined rubber and graphite get left behind. That’s the “stuff” you brush off of your paper when you’re finished erasing. 

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Can dominos knock down the empire state building ?

Chain Reaction.

Everyone knows that a line of standing dominos creates a fun chain reaction when you knock the first one over; but did you know you can use increasingly larger dominos and get the same result?

The setup.

Professor Stephen Morris knocks over a 1-meter tall domino that weighs over 100 pounds by starting with a 5mm high by 1mm thick domino.He uses a size ratio of 1.5, meaning each domino is one and a half times larger than the last one. This is the generally accepted maximum ratio that dominos can have to successfully knock each other over.

Hans Van Leeuwen of Leiden University in the Netherlands, published a paper online showing that, theoretically, you could have a size ratio of up to two. But that’s in an ideal (and probably unrealistic) situation.

Fun fact.

There are 13 dominoes in this sequence. If Professor Morris used 29 dominoes in total, with the next one always being 1.5x larger, the last domino would be the height of the Empire State Building.

Source: Physics Buzz.