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Kind: captions
Language: en

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I'm with tef, who is going to tell you something

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you might not know about origami.

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Tef, take it away.

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I'd like to tell you about a piece of origami,

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that's in space. Now, space satellites, they have solar

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panels and solar panels need to unfold.

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You might imagine a piece of paper slowly unfolding.

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Unfortunately, to unfold most solar panels, you need

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two motors. One to pull it this way, and one to pull it up

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this way. But, Japanese astrophysicists realised that you

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could probably do it with one motor instead, and what

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he came up with was this. He could take a solar panel

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and unfold it with one motor all the way out.

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Not only that, he can also fold it all the way back in.

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How this actually works is, you fold the piece of paper

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into fifths, like so, admittedly I am making it look easy,

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and then what you do, is you fold it over repeatedly,

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almost making a snake all the way up such that there's a

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a little bit of an angle all the way up. But what this

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means is that this piece of paper can fold down far

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more compactly and far more quickly than your

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traditional folding. Now this actual fold is called the

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Miura fold and it's also used outside of solar panels. It's

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actually been recently tested with lithium ion batteries

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because it folds down so compactly it improves the

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energy density. But that's not the reason why I love this.

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Not because it's gone into space but because it works

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so well for maps. You can take a map out of your

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pocket, instantly unfold it, see exactly where you are, and

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instantly fold it back up again. And no other fold, I know

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for maps, can do this thing. So despite being an

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amazing piece of origami that's gone into space, it's

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actually the most useful piece of origami I know

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down here on earth.

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