"I really like the graphics capabilities of Mathematica because they provide for easy and colorful visualization of the geometric shapes used for origami," Zamiatina said. "The Mathematica animation allows you to grasp any minute detail of paper movement...something that cannot be achieved by origami albums and books, no matter how detailed they might be."

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Origami!

You can probably create a paper airplane out of a six-inch piece of paper, but can you fold and crease a piece of paper to make a bird with flapping wings? Well, following Lucy Zamiatina's Mathematica simulations, you can easily create this and many other simple origami masterpieces.

With Mathematica, Zamiatina writes a Mathematica description for each basic paper-folding step. She then animates the steps so the figurine can develop in sequence. This renders the actual movement of the paper segments and shows the initial plain square of paper fold itself, step-by-step, into a beautiful origami figurine like a winged bird.

"Mathematica's implementation of origami is based on the systemization and geometric description of the actual moving paper segments," said Zamiatina, who makes origami birds, fish, angels, and even space shuttles. "This helps people see basic geometric constructs such as reflection or proportional division in a picturesque and eye-catching context."

Key features of Mathematica used:

• Graphic
• Notebook
• Programming