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14-year-old Miles Wu folded origami pattern that holds 10k times its own weight
- gnabgib 9mo agoSmall discussion 3 months ago (43 points, 9 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46106871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46106871
- dang 9mo agoThanks! Macroexpanded: 14yo won $25k for origami that holds 10k times its weight - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46106871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46106871 - Dec 2025 (9 comments)
- amelius 9mo agoWhere can we read about the other submissions?
- bookofjoe 9mo agoThe top 30 finalists are listed here: https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/2025-project-showcase/ https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/2025-project-showcase/
- nuclearnicer 9mo agoIt looks like the top 10% from 6th to 8th grade Society of Science fairs are invited to participate. They are then selected down to a top 300[1] and a top 30.[2] You can find a project name for the top 300 and a paragraph on each of the top 30. [1] https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/2025-top-300-junior-innovators/ https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/2025-top-300-junior-in... [2] https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/2025-finalists/ https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/2025-finalists/
- pants2 9mo agoFun when these things hold a surprising amount of weight. Reminds me when these two engineers on Lego Masters made a bridge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9WT6TB15yE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9WT6TB15yE
- sysworld 9mo agowtf, why lego, whhhy? "The uploader has not made this video available in your country" edit: What, they geoblocked a ~1min clip, wow.
- bookofjoe 9mo agoI live in the U.S.: I can watch it. What is "your country?"
- abanana 9mo agoIt's Lego Masters USA (Fox), rather than the Lego company itself, so I imagine they're being extra-careful with licensing. I'm in the UK and it's geoblocked for me.
- layer8 9mo agoThis is from a Fox TV series, probably distribution rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Masters_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Masters_(American_TV_seri...
- ck2 9mo agoCould concept be applied to submarine vehicles to exponential increase their resistance to pressure at depth?
- codeddesign 9mo agoThis is weight distribution on a flat plain. Think of Roman Arches. On a curved plain, weight distribution of THIS origami falls apart as pressure is added horizontally (not just vertically).
- efreak 9mo agoI've made similar tessellations before, they can be curved. You can trivially make a pre-folded tessellation into a cylinder of arbitrary diameter; to curve it like a submarine, you'd just adjust the angle of the creases. Optimize the curve so the pressure is always perpendicular and there's no problem here. The real issue here is that there's not much point in it, as the very thing that makes this useful (the ability to fold it up) would also make it collapse easily in a pressurized environment. You'd also have to deal with preventing leaks if you wanted air inside, likely by adding an outer hull, which would then defeat the purpose.
- layer8 9mo agoUnfortunately it stops working when the paper gets wet. ;)
- Dylan16807 9mo agoExponential in relation to what other value? Adding 1 to _____ causes a doubling of resistance to pressure, adding 2 is a quadrupling, adding 3 is an octupling, what goes in the blank?
- pjc50 9mo agoSubmarines work on the principle of the arch: a spherical or cylindrical hull section transfers all the force into compression of the material so there is no net "inwards" force. The weak points then turn out to be joints, material defects (the famous Titan failure), windows and other piercing points, and any unexpected shear forces.
- givemeethekeys 9mo agoDon't get hung up on "14 year old". Pay attention to "took up origami 6 years ago". That's 6 years of passionate learning, experimenting and improvement.
- uoaei 9mo agoAlso don't get hung up on "folded". He hasn't innovated a design (it was invented by a Japanese astrophysicist, Miura-Ori), merely measured sustainable load across different designs.
- nine_k 9mo ago"Miura" is the name of the astrophysicist. "Ori" (折り) just means "fold", as in "origami" = "fold+paper".
- uoaei 9mo agoThank you!
- adfm 9mo agoDon't get hug up on "invented". Ruth Asawa registered for (1956) and received US patent 185,504 on June 16, 1959 at the suggestion of her professor, Buckminster Fuller. https://theartian.com/ruth-asawa-patent-collaboration/ https://theartian.com/ruth-asawa-patent-collaboration/
- Centrino 9mo agoDon't get hung up on "patent". You can't patent an idea, you patent a specific implementation of an idea. The boy experimented to find the optimal parameters (height, width, angles) for load bearing of that earlier invention. So, the result of his work would warrant a new patent, of course with reference to all earlier patents of which his work is an improvement.
- adfm 9mo ago
- tl2do 9mo ago[flagged]
- PunchyHamster 9mo agoTriangles together strong!
- Aardwolf 9mo agoSurprisingly it's not hexagons, because hexagons are supposed to be the bestagons!
- MagicMoonlight 9mo agoSo what is the ideal pattern and how can you build a shelter with it? I think it would be fun to build a playhouse out of it.
- nine_k 9mo agoI think that design has the easiest application in something like corrugated cardboard, as the middle layer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miura_fold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miura_fold
- darig 9mo ago[dead]
- tgtweak 9mo agoI remember cutting an IKEA desk top down one side and discovering the inside was just corrugated cardboard under a few layers of laminate. it was trivial to break by shearing it but in a typical construction where the weight is mostly up/down it was obviously sufficient - until you cut the rigid sides off that is... While this probably does have incredible Z-axis strength, I can't imagine it being very strong with any kind of lateral loads.
- jnellis 9mo agoThat the construction method of most hollow-core doors in your house.
- SwtCyber 9mo agoIKEA moment is a perfect real-world demo of how much the outer geometry and boundary conditions matter
- lm28469 9mo agoThis design is terrible for desks, they all end up sagging after a few years of use. Their "SANDSBERG" kitchen table is a much better choice for a desk, no cardboard and metal reinforced
- voxelghost 9mo agoYes especially in hot humid climates where they sag already after a year if you are keeping a Monitor and some books on it.
- hiAndrewQuinn 9mo agoI don't think I have ever lived in a place where I've kept a desk, or any other furniture, long enough to care, though.
- lm28469 9mo agoI like the idea of not buying disposable furnitures, especially when there are alternatives at the same price. I can stand on my current desk (the ikea kitchen table) with my full weight and probably jump on it, the previous one was bowing if I did as little as resting my elbows on it
- SilentM68 9mo agoSmart teen :)
- Aeroi 9mo agowhat if, instead you just placed whatever weight you wanted onto a flat unfolded piece of paper.
- xqcgrek2 9mo agoThese teen science fair winners almost never amount to anything exceptional, and are a product intense parental supervision. Most universities have wised up.
- nephihaha 9mo agoSometimes, but I do find his story inspiring. He has taken an age old craft and demonstrated it may have practical applications. I hope he can patent some design based off this and then he can make some money off it. (Yes, I know he didn't invent this particular fold.)
- palata 9mo ago> Yes, I know he didn't invent this particular fold So how could he patent it? I join the parent: it's a kid who empirically evaluated how much weight an existing fold can hold. It's not like he solved a hundred years old mathematical problem.
- tehjoker 9mo agoThat evaluation has value and the possible use case of strong and cheap emergency housing is interesting though it sounds like it would take substantial work to push it to fruition and would need to be competitive with existing solutions.
- palata 9mo agoDid you have a look at the pictures in the article? How would you build housing with that fold?
- tehjoker 9mo agoIt's true, it's a bit tricky, but it's an interesting idea. One could imagine a deployable carpet that consists of folded paper sandwiched between thin water impermeable layers to make a lightweight collapsible elevated floor. Maybe there could be other applications too. That said, it may not be strong enough to hold the weight of an adult on one foot.
- hooloovoo_zoo 9mo agoLooks kinda like an egg carton to me. So if an empty egg carton weighs 50g, that's like saying you could stack 500kg on top. Pretty impressive.
- mlhpdx 9mo agoThe key here is scale. What works in inches often falls apart at feet. The structure is holding about 33 psi over the area (which is rigidly supported from below), much more along the contact edges. By comparison balsa wood can support significantly more pressure (varies, but well over 100psi) but doesn’t concentrate pressure on edges. Is there anything useful about this? Maybe as an inexpensive(?) core for high strength skins?
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> The key here is scale. What works in inches often falls apart at feet Does that mean we could increase the orders of magnitude if we made it smaller? Lots of tiny stuff needs mechanical support. And lots of folded small things agglomerated is another way to say biology.
- Terr_ 9mo agoCloser to "mineralogy", plenty of things are both smaller and tougher (on this "support its own weight" metric) than cells or proteins with their squishy folding rules. Even if we include things like hydroxyapatite in teeth, or even lignin, those are more like byproducts of biology than active biology itself.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago> plenty of things are both smaller and tougher (on this "support its own weight" metric) than cells or proteins with their squishy folding rules I was thinking microscopic versus nanoscale. Folding something out of a flat material is probably cheaper than machining it, and if it's stronger than additively manufacturing it you have applications in medical devices and aerospace for starters.
- efreak 9mo agoMicroscopic is unnecessary. Tessellation is already used in space and medical devices (not mentioned in this article: it's used in devices like stents). The specific fold being used here is named after an astrophysicist and has already been used in space. > a simple piece of paper, folded into a Miura-ori origami pattern, could hold 10,000 times its own weight > Wu was especially intrigued by the Miura-ori fold, named after its inventor, the Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura. Famed for its use in aeronautical engineering, the fold has been leveraged to make solar panels for spacecraft and satellites. One of its earliest space applications was in Japan’s Space Flyer Unit, a satellite launched in 1995.
- IshKebab 9mo agoUgh, emergency shelter? We already have 50 million emergency shelter designs. It's ok to say this has no practical uses but is very cool.
- nephihaha 9mo agoIt can hold a considerable amount of weight then that may have application for areas where sand, snow or even rocks may be a problem
- palata 9mo ago> It's ok to say this has no practical uses but is very cool. Agreed. But it doesn't go viral as much. Every cool robotics research goes with a comment that says "it could be useful for disaster response in a post-apocalyptic world where the conditions have changed in such a way that only my robot can save us".
- maxbond 9mo agoIt's a science fair project. It's part of the rubric. More broadly it's a scène à faire (an obligatory genre trope) for academic writing.
- moomoo11 9mo agowhat a smart kid! wishing him all the best
- dietr1ch 9mo agoDoes this shape hold up good weight distribution properties when 3D-printed? Maybe this could be huge for 3D-printing mostly hollow, yet strong parts that require in fewer plastic and time spent.
- sen 9mo agoThat’s already a thing. Infill. There’s lots of variations of infill that all have different strengths and weaknesses.
- emporas 9mo agoThere is also 3d printing origami shapes [1]. But 3D printing is still plastic(usually). The idea of origami steel sheets has stuck on my mind ever since I found out about laser welding. Cutting thin 2mm sheets of steel, stitching them back together in different shapes, and holding tons of weight? That sounds very compelling to me. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNVBK7-h9Fs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNVBK7-h9Fs
- dietr1ch 9mo agoAnyone knows how does 3D printed metals compare to CNC-made parts? I know it's been used to build engines, which suggests they are strong, but there's also all this process around ancient swords around tempering, folding, etc that suggests that maybe just 3D-printing metals might result in weaker structures.
- punnerud 9mo agoThat’s like saying origami is already a thing. Agree that this could be cool to test as new kind of infill.
- airstrike 9mo agoHe didn't invent the pattern though
- regularfry 9mo ago
- PlatoIsADisease 9mo agoI wish the parents could be given a bit of credit. Instead we pretend the kid was doing this all solo... Its way less impressive when the parents are guiding them. But the parents are doing lots of unappreciated work here. /parent here
- palata 9mo agoAgreed, but then it makes the whole thing a lot less impressive and it doesn't get viral. Parents or a teacher most likely guided this kid to empirically measure how much weight a known origami fold can hold. I mean I remember that we were guided to do similar experiments at school when I was the same age... I don't remember making the news for "14-year olds empirically confirm Newton's law" :-).
- calf 9mo agoIt's individualist exceptionalism taken to modern extremes. I remember having these sorts of science assignment in middle school, one with dried pasta with textbooks, and another with dropping egg safely in a box. Invariably the winners won (me and my partner) because our dads had "advice" when we got home and they saw what we were playing with. Winning in my experience was the most corrosive part of those experiences because I literally did not come up with the solution.
- danparsonson 9mo agoI don't know, personally I think it's a bit weird for any mentor to expect recognition for their mentee's success. Surely the success itself is the reward? Pay it forward and all that. I would hope any parent would be adult enough not to feel like their child was stealing the spotlight from them.
- albumen 9mo agoYou could look at this in at least two different ways. 1) journalism, and how it’s a better story if the kid is a self-contained genius; or 2) having youth be thankful for mentoring, and to understand little in life is achieved without others’ assistance. I don’t consider that the parent comment is seeking to “steal the spotlight”; just that it’d be a more realistic appraisal of how success is achieved.
- stevage 9mo agoThis is very cool, but I don't really see the direct connection between a paper structure which is very strong in compression and emergency accommodation (which the article really focuses on). Tents don't need to be strong in compression - there's no weight on the roof. And obviously paper is not a material that scales up or would be practical for outdoor use. Just a bit confused by the obvious mismatch here - maybe it's the journalist putting more weight on the disaster application than the kid did.
- s0rce 9mo agoMost tents are in fact not very strong in compression unless designed for snow. If you do get a big snow you need to wake up in the night and remove the snow so it doesn't crush the tent.
- _joel 9mo agoI thought it was about the compressability of the material to save space, perhaps?
- SwtCyber 9mo agoI suspect the connection isn't "paper roof holding weight" so much as "geometry that can turn thin sheet material into a stiff, self-supporting form"
- solatic 9mo ago> tents don't need to be strong in compression - there's no weight on the roof But there is on the floor, unless you expect the inhabitants to sleep more or less directly on the ground, including themselves, whatever is used as a mattress, belongings, small appliances, etc. Emergency habitation is not the same as a camping tent, it needs to be able to service populations that have difficulty with camping's limitations, like the elderly. > Paper is not a material that scales up Citation needed? It's made from a renewable resource (wood) and there's some 400+ million metric tons of paper production yearly (source: Gemini, so feel free to take with a grain of salt). > Or would be practical for outdoor use If exposed directly to the elements, sure. But what if the paper is laminated or otherwise enclosed within plastic, rubber, or other synthetic material well-recognized as hydrophobic?
- ktoo_ 9mo agoThere's something about this that stands out as very concerning for me. This, clearly very clever, young man is 14 years old. The article says: "Wu had always been fascinated with the ancient Japanese art of origami, but he really began indulging in it as a hobby about six years ago." At eight. He was *indulging* in a hobby at eight years old. Indulging in a hobby should be a pre-retirement activity. What an incredible weight the attitude of the writer puts on kids.
- thunky 9mo ago> Indulging in a hobby should be a pre-retirement activity I don't think indulge means what you think it means.
- ktoo_ 9mo agoI apologise for you misunderstanding my example as a strict definition? For anyone who hasn't understood my meaning: Indulge is a word that implies that you're allowing yourself something that you might not ordinarily. The point being: it is (or should be) silly to suggest that a child can be said to indulge in a hobby. This is because the further implication is that an eight year old might show some restraint and focus on their book learning and networking.
- philipwhiuk 9mo agoOr might spend it all outside playing football. Maybe that's what they should be doing. You've got preconceived notions of what children "should be doing" in their free time to start with.
- wraptile 9mo agoI'd argue that kids should be generalist, as in learning diverse set of experiences rather than spending years honing a single craft. This is peak time where brain can quick adapt to new novel problems (like language learning) and spending this time to perfect a single niche feels counter-productive if not straight unethical. Kids should only specialize when they become grown enough to idependently decide on what they want to do.
- jjk166 9mo agoI'd be curious what kind of variation there was across his 54 different designs. If he's discovered the existence of a narrow window where strength dramatically increases, that seems a much more interesting find than if this whole family of origami patterns is knowns to perform well and this variant just happened to be slightly better than the rest. It's exciting to think that there may be super strong designs just waiting to be found with a little bit of rigorous refinement.
- MengerSponge 9mo agoIt's a well understood shape, but we're happy to see a teenager playing and learning. It has a particularly cool region in its configuration space where it can be bistable: https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.93.033005 https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.93.03...
- thenthenthen 9mo agoWhats unique or special about these particular tessellations? My students have been making similar ones for 10 years (and googled them)
- csa 9mo ago> Whats unique or special about these particular tessellations? 1. He talked about them to people who were interested in listening. 2. He was able to apply the knowledge he gained for his specific task in a variety of team tasks at the event.
- wileydragonfly 9mo agoPretty cool, good for him. My Thermo Fisher bottle opener is a prized possession. Much like those cancer center ash trays.
- electronicdangr 9mo ago[dead]
- Razengan 9mo agoDoesn't everyone else roll paper receipts etc. by the corner into a long stick? As a kid I sometimes licked the trailing corner to make it stick even better. I was and am always intrigued by how it becomes so much stronger and stiffer than the original flat sheet, but I never scienced too much into it :)
- pcurve 9mo agoOur future is bright. This made me smile more than most news I've read in recent months.
- AxiomLab 9mo agoIt’s amazing how emergent structural properties can come from simple, deterministic folding rules. In algorithmic design, we often struggle to balance form and physical function. But rigid foldability proves that finding the exact right geometric constraint actually creates the function. Respect to the 14-year-old.
- SwtCyber 9mo agoPretty impressive work for 14 and more importantly, a great example of curiosity turning into real engineering thinking
- amelius 9mo agoProves that a child can be perfectly happy without having access to social media. Just give them a sheet of paper.
- metalman 9mo agoI propose a moment of silence, for what if all the hype here proves to be half true, is the last time in history that there will be anything like a youth bieng able to achive a simple cognitive performance that distinguises them from a dollar store calculator.
- aquir 9mo agoImagine 3D printing this from titanium...how much weight could that hold? Amazing achievement!
- democracy 9mo agoI hope the smart boys keeps engineering mind growing and gets a good degree and keeps contributing to the better good! Good luck to him!
- titaniumrain 9mo agono one will say he is a chines descendant this time as origami is not AI, not military, not bats!
- hifathom 9mo ago[flagged]
- Aardwolf 9mo agoHow impressive holding 10k times ones weight is, depends on size right? E.g. an ant can hold 50 times its weight, but a 10x10x10 times upscaled ant would not be able to do that The size and 10k amount here are impressive compared to the ant nonetheless
- alexa990 9mo ago[dead]
- seyz 9mo agoNo phd, no funding committee, no peer review anxiety. Just curoisity and paper. Sometimes the breakthrough comes from not knowing the problem was supposed to be difficult. This is what happens when you don't tell a kid something is too hard
- vatsachak 9mo agoHoly shit there is so much cope in this thread. Give the boy his props
- mattfrommars 9mo agoAs a grown adult in this mid 30s, I wonder when the transition happens in kids who are passionate about certain subject or career turn into becoming lawyers or accountants in adulthood… it’s like encounters in life changes people to pursue a career which they never imagined they’d do in their childhood You won’t find a kid who’d say, “I want to be accountant when I grow up…” instead you’d find people want to be pilots or police officer….
- C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 9mo ago> I wonder when the transition happens in kids who are passionate about certain subject or career turn into becoming lawyers or accountants in adulthood… > You won’t find a kid who’d say, “I want to be accountant when I grow up…” When they realize that people with more money and more connections to powerful people get their way over people with less money and fewer connections to powerful people. The children of the former group also get a significantly better starting position in life compared to the children of the latter group. That is, if the latter manage to attract a suitable mate as poor people. If you choose dreams over money, you're not only failing your own potential desires and ambitions that will then probably never materialize, but also your future family and offspring. As the wealth inequality gap widens ever more, such pressures only intensify, and everything turns more and more into shit. Those kids' (from your post) desire to live a life with a fulfilling career is sacrificed at the altar to the dragons hoarding more and more wealth at all costs (billionaires).
- mattfrommars 9mo agoAgreed. You succinctly put my thoughts into words which I couldn’t quite describe. I truely wish this kid continues to pursue his passion and not get side tracked with grim realities of the real world.
- watersb 9mo agoA couple of years ago, National Geographic magazine had a feature on the use of origami in engineering and art; the print edition featured a striking cover photograph of a gold colored sunshade for a space telescope under test at JPL. The web site is aggressively paywalled, to such a degree that I cannot determine the date of publication. But they had a public access podcast and transcript here https://www.nationalgeographic.com/podcasts/article/unfolding-the-future-of-origami https://www.nationalgeographic.com/podcasts/article/unfoldin...
- hurios 9mo ago[dead]
- kccqzy 9mo agoThis brings back lots of memories. When I was in high school, there was a project to build a paper bridge that can hold weight. The class was split into teams of four. Our team was the team that had the most reproducible results, because I was very much hung up on documenting the various folds we had experimented with. I probably spent more time using a computer to draw the lines that would aid the fold than actually thinking about the folds. In hindsight I think that event actually told me I was more interested in being an engineer than a scientist.