Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T07:37:53.845Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The geometry of folding paper dolls

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Brigitte Servatius
Brigitte Servatius*
Affiliation:
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester MA 01609, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

When a parent sees a little girl sitting on the floor cutting paper dolls, many thoughts may come to mind: ‘She’s keeping out of trouble’ or ‘She’s making a mess’ or even ‘There go my tax returns’. The thought that should have come to my parent’s mind, however, was ‘One day she’ll be a mathematician’. My grandmother, who worked as a dressmaker, often allowed my sister and me to use her razor sharp scissors on the strips of leftover tracing paper. This paper is inspired by a notebook that I kept in grade school when I ‘studied’ paper dolls, and the figures are based on dolls found pressed between the pages.

Type
Articles
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 81 , Issue 490 , March 1997 , pp. 29 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Yamaguchi, M., Kusudama, ball origami, Shufunotomo, Japan Publications, Tokyo (1990).Google Scholar
2. Coxeter, H. S. M. and Moser, W. O. J., Generators and relations for discrete groups, Ergeb. der Math. Grenzgeb., Bd. 14, Springer Verlag (1972).Google Scholar
3. Hilbert, D. and Cohn-Vossen, S., Geometry and the imagination, Chelsea, New York (1952).Google Scholar
4. Grünbaum, B. and Shephard, G., Tilings and patterns, Freeman, New York (1987).Google Scholar
5. Coxeter, H. S. M., Colored symmetry, in M. C. Escher: Art and Science (Coxeter, H. S. M. et al. eds.), Elsevier, Amsterdam (1986) pp. 15–33.Google Scholar