Aromatic ⌬⏣

Benzene is a pretty important compound in the study of organic chemistry, but you shouldn't drink it. However, you can fold it if you like, which is exactly what I did. I wanted to fold some more chemistry related origami, so I decided to try benzene. I started off by making a hexagon and making a hexagon twist in the center to make the circle that represents the modern delocalized view that we have thanks to Kathleen Lonsdale. Here is what I ended up with:


No CP, because the explanation is all that you should need. It was free-folded anyway, so theres no real measurements.
Next, I decided to try the older structure of benzene with alternating double and triple bonds. This was Kekulé's structure, and is still commonly used for many drawings of compounds. On the BKChem program on my computer, this is the structure used when drawing an aromatic compound. I folded 3 sets of pleats from the center and then folded at the edge in those three spots to make a line. This might be a little harder to understand, but the picture should help.


Hopefully I'll be able to use these to make other origami structures in the future.

All Wet

I've wanted to fold a molecule for quite some time because I love chemistry so much. At first, I was thinking of folding something like Asprin or methane, but decided on something much simpler to start with: water. Its not often you see water as the subject for a model. I have seen it as a background and many things that come from and live in water.
Here is the CP that I used. It is fairly simple to fold, but don't get the order of the folds mixed up.


To start off, you have to fold the model in half horizontally and then fold up two corners for color changes. After that you can make the other folds to get to the base. The details are quite simple because you just have to round the "spheres" until you get something like the common Van der Waals spheres models of water. Here is what I mean:

Too slow

Just yesterday, I figured out that this months challenge on the french forum is Windmill base models. I started folding something right away. At first, I was trying to get a bird of some sort, and then I was just doodling. Eventually, I ended up with a bird that has no name other than "Bird". Because the final CP isn't really based on the windmill base, I've decided that it can't be part of the challenge (deadlines are a bit less important on the french forum). Here is the CP that I ended up with:


You can see that there is quite a bit to the model. The middle of the model is crimped at 45° angles and the bottom section forms the feet and tail. The top is the two wings and the head. After folding the base, you can do a lot with the head, such as make it into a beak or funny crest. It may take a while to fold from the CP, but hopefully it is still possible!

Another Spiky Animal

I'm not really sure how I came up with the idea for this. I guess I was thinking about the different hexpleated model that I had seen, and I started to wonder about octpleating. It turns out that octpleating really is possible, but isn't very practical if too much is used. The CP below is probably as far as you should go, unless you want something like a sea urchin (which are actually folded way too often, I find). After spending quite a lot of time trying to collapse the model, I finally figured it out. The way that it collapses ends up with two legs and a whole bunch of points. I turned the two points in the center into a head, and the rest became spikes. Here is the octpleated CP that I was talking about:


It isn't too impressive, but its a pain to collapse. Precreasing isn't too hard if you fold 22.5° radially from each center point. When collapsing, you have to collapse it all at once, slowly. Eventually (with a bit of trial and error), it should fold flat to the size of the center section. Thats the magic of crease patterns.

Spiky Rabbit

Back when I originally folded this, about a month ago, Ubuntu 9.04 had just been released. As always, there is a animal name to go with the new version: Jaunty Jackalope. I'm not sure why, but that made me want to fold one. I couldn't / didn't have the time to fold a full jackalope, so I just folded the head. Anyway, since then I haven't got to refold it and take a picture until this week. Here is the CP that I used for the jackalope head: It isn't much, so it shouldn't be too hard to collapse. The top section of the CP make the antlers, and the bottom part is the head including ears. The antlers can be color changed, but you have to be careful not to rip the paper. Good luck!