The Silver Tangram

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tangram

One silver rectangle*, A4 in this case.

It becomes seven smaller silver rectangles – two A6, three A7, and two A8.

They become seven Tangram tiles.

Seven Tangram tiles become, well, anything.

This is a good office fidget, because it’s so fast and easy to construct and you can probably put your hands on a sheet of A4 paper without too much trouble.

Here’s how you do it. See here for the waterbomb base.

Silver Tangram (pdf)

Thanks to the friends who test-folded these: you know who you are!

*Any rectangle where the long edge is √2 times the length of the short edge. If you divide one in half, each of the halves has exactly the same aspect ratio as the original. A4 paper is a silver rectangle, as is A3 or A5 (and so on) or B4 and its family. If you live in the US  then I do not know what tricks your standard paper sizes do – sorry! But you can trim it appropriately by doing careful things with diagonals.

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Dangerfoxes! (Not Really Dangerous)

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foxes, origami

I saw this sign posted in the lobby of a friend’s apartment building in Dublin. It says, I think:

URGENT NOTICE

It has been brought to my attention that there is a WILD FOX roaming the complex.

FOX’S ARE Wild Animals and are not to be approached as they are dangerous and carry (diseases?)

We have informed a Pest Company and getting advice on how to stop them from being in the complex.

In the meanwhile Parents please keep your children safe, away from the Fox and do not try and pet them, offer them food or approach them in any way as they are wild and unpredictable.

Make sure you are tying up your strong black refuse bags and placing the Bins and closing the lids – Do not leave rubbish on the ground.

You guys, Dublin has a whole lot of urban foxes. (Check out a family member’s blog on the subject!) They’re about as common as squirrels, which is to say less so than pigeons but nowhere near rare enough to get worked up about. Like, when you see a dog-shaped but catlike shadow flitting down the street at twilight you think Oh, there goes a fox rather than HOLY RAVIOLI A WWWWILD FFFFOX RUN FOR THE HILLLLLS!

So yes, frantic writer of signs. There’s quite likely more than one fox in this territory, you can’t pet it whether or not you try to(!), and of course you shouldn’t leave rubbish on the ground but doesn’t that go without saying? And there’s nothing much to worry about.

This little fox is not a perfectly-engineered realistic sculpture, but I like it.   There’s something appealing about a model that’s so stylized it’s almost a physical cartoon. I’m especially fond of the tilted, inquisitive ears – foxes have acutely sensitive hearing and they do swivel their heads just like that to listen.

Would you like diagrams? They’re pretty quick and enjoyable to fold.