Robert Lang, a physicist turned origami artist, shares his folding designs, TreeMaker software and writing on the math and science of origami.
Commenters call him a leading figure in origami math, recommend his book Origami Design Secrets, and point to his site for art and science.
The article talks about Robert J. Lang (https://langorigami.com), but he deserves more than a passing mention if we're talking about origami. He's a physicist/mathematician at NASA, an AMS Fellow, and also one of the top origamists in the world.
Here's a video showing his extraordinary origami insects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYoTCssVyJU
He wrote dozens of papers about the mathematics of origami over the years, and last year he came out with a gorgeous book on the subject: Twists, Tilings, and Tessellations: Mathematical Methods for Geometric Origami (https://www.amazon.com/Twists-Tilings-Tessellations-Mathematical-Geometric/dp/1138563064)
He also has a bunch of origami books with "regular" animal models, but they tend to be on the complex end of the spectrum, so they're not for beginner origamists.
He also developed TreeMaker, which is a software tool for systematically designing folding patterns from a model specification: https://langorigami.com/article/treemaker/ (some of his complex insect models are based on TreeMaker folding patterns)
Is there? I followed the link[1] to the original author of the desktop software this web app is derived from, and he says:
> To make a long story short, by the third generation of ReferenceFinder (written in 2003), I had incorporated all 7 of the Huzita-Justin Axioms of folding into the program, allowing it to potentially explore all possible folding sequences consisting of sequential alignments that each form a single crease in a square of paper. Of course, the family tree of such sequences grows explosively (or to be precise, exponentially); but the concomitant growth in the availability of computing horsepower has made it possible to explore a reasonable subset of that exponential family tree, and in effect, by pure brute force, find a close approximation to any arbitrary point or line within a unit square using a very small number of folds.
(emphasis added)
[1] https://langorigami.com/article/referencefinder/
I'm an aspiring inventor of board games, so that takes all my free time. In the past, I used to practice technical origami: The ancient art of paper folding meets mathematics. It's the best of both worlds: a very practical, yet mind-bending activity.
If you're interested, start by reading Robert J. Lang http://www.langorigami.com/ and Erik Demaine http://erikdemaine.org/.
Origami Design Secret is the best introduction on modern techniques: http://www.amazon.com/Origami-Design-Secrets-Mathematical-Methods/dp/1568814364/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8
I also read a lot. It's not cool yet, but it will be if I get to read 100+ non-fiction books in one year. That's my goal for 2015.
There's much more to a telescope than the primary mirror which the author conveniently neglects. As others point out below, making an IR observatory (JWST) requires keeping everything around the mirror cold so that the mirrors and instruments (not trivial, either) have a hope in heck of working.
Livermore tested a multi-meter thin Fresnel optic back in 2002. They also worked with Robert Lang, physicist and origamist, to figure out how to pack the thing effectively.
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1412512/m2/1/high_res_d/15005362.pdf
https://langorigami.com/article/eyeglass-telescope/
Origami is one of those subjects that hits the aesthetic button as well as the technical button .. it forms the roots of a means of manifesting "programmable matter" which is long overdue for a bit of crazy technological innovation.
Every now and then I go through a phase of "catching up with the state of the origami art" and it is always rewarding to see the progress made by academics and scientists alike .. I find Computational Origami utterly fascinating, personally:
https://langorigami.com/article/computational-origami/
I would suggest origami. Origami is probably the art form that's been studied by mathematicians and computer scientists more than any others, e.g., flat-foldable origami crease patterns obey some simple mathematical theorems [1]. There has also been considerable research into finding an origami crease pattern for a particular target shape, and software such as TreeMaker helps one do that [2].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_of_paper_folding#Flat_folding
[2]: https://langorigami.com/article/treemaker/