Fold and cut part 3

We decided to do one more fold and cut project tonight. Our first two are here:

Fold and Cut project #1

Fold and cut project #2

Tonight we decided to try to fold and cut some of the letters that Katie Steckles demonstrated at the end of the Numberphile video. My older son chose the letter ‘B’ and my younger son chose the letter ‘L’. We didn’t quite get the ‘L’ right, but overall both letters were a great challenge.

Here’s my older son and ‘B’:

and here here’s my younger son with ‘L’:

Feels like we could do projects like these for a long time! For some more amazing one cut shapes, check out Erik Demaine’s MoMath lecture (with the one cut shapes starting around 2:30 in the video below): (h/t to Patrick Honner for this amazing lecture by Demaine, btw)

The fold and cut theorem is awesome

Yesterday we saw this incredible Numberphile video:

We did a really fun project this morning based on the video, too:

Our One Cut Project

There was much more to do, though – this activity has so many different possibilities for kids! One thing that was on my mind all day was shapes with holes. While my younger son was taking a bath, I decided to try out a simple square in a square shape with my older son:

When my younger son got out of the tub he gave it a try. The cool thing was that he did it a slightly different way!

Just to emphasize that comment near the end: “hey cool . . . the fold and cut theorem is awesome!”

Can’t wait to try more shapes!