Don'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.

The 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?

I 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.

Does 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.

Small discussion 3 months ago (43 points, 9 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46106871

So 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.

I 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

Fun 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

Looks 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.

Triangles together strong!

Ugh, emergency shelter? We already have 50 million emergency shelter designs. It's ok to say this has no practical uses but is very cool.

Could concept be applied to submarine vehicles to exponential increase their resistance to pressure at depth?

what if, instead you just placed whatever weight you wanted onto a flat unfolded piece of paper.

Smart teen :)

what a smart kid! wishing him all the best

Where can we read about the other submissions?

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These teen science fair winners almost never amount to anything exceptional, and are a product intense parental supervision. Most universities have wised up.