astronomy

Tomohiro Tachi

Tomohiro Tachi is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Tomohiro Tachi rather than just read about it. In short: Tomohiro Tachi (Japanese: 舘知宏, born 1982) is a Japanese academic who studies origami from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining approaches from the mathematics of paper folding, structural rigidity, computational geometry, architecture, and materials science. His work was profiled in "The Origami Revolution" (2017), part of the Nova series of US science documentaries.

Key takeaways

Tomohiro Tachi belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Tomohiro Tachi to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Tomohiro Tachi from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Tomohiro Tachi (Japanese: 舘知宏, born 1982) is a Japanese academic who studies origami from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining approaches from the mathematics of paper folding, structural rigidity, computational geometry, architecture, and materials science. His work was profiled in "The Origami Revolution" (2017), part of the Nova series of US science documentaries. He is a professor at the University of Tokyo.

Education and career Tachi studied engineering and architecture at the University of Tokyo, earning bachelor's and master's degrees in 2005 and 2007 respectively, and completing his Ph.D. in 2010. He became an assistant professor in the Department of General Systems Studies at the University of Tokyo in 2010, and became an associate professor in 2018, adding at the same time affiliations with the Department of Information and Graphic Sciences and Department of Architecture.

Contributions Tachi has been called a "renowned origami artist", and "one of the world experts on rigid origami. His artworks include a "calculated and precise" nudibranch, folded from mirror-finished metal, and an origami version of the Utah teapot, exhibited at the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art in Israel. With Erik Demaine, he has developed software that can automatically transform any three-dimensional object, represented as a polygon mesh, into an origami model of the object. His research also includes generalized versions of the Miura fold that can be used to model any smooth surface, and bistable hyperbolic paraboloid structures formed from nested square origami folds. With Hiroya Tanaka, he is the author of the 2020 Japanese-language book コンピュテーショナル・ファブリケーション [Computational Fabrication: Design and Science of Origami and Tessellation].

Recognition In 2009, Tachi won the Hangai Prize of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS), for his work on quadrilateral mesh origami. His work with Kōryō Miura on flexible polyhedra derived from the Miura fold won the 2013 Tsuboi Award of the IASS. He was the recipient of the 2016 A. T. Yang Memorial Award in Theoretical Kinematics of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, with Tom Hull, for their joint work on predicting the motion of rigid origami patterns when forces are applied to them in their flat state. Together with his coauthors Evgueni T. Filipov and Glaucio H. Paulino, Tachi won the 2020 Cozzarelli Prize in Engineering and Applied Sciences for their work using the Miura fold to generate stiff but reconfigurable tubular structures.

References

External links Home page Tomohiro Tachi publications indexed by Google Scholar Origami models by Dr. Tomohiro Tachi, Google Arts & Culture What I am thinking: origami artist and mathematician Tomohiro Tachi, interview with Tachi originally published in the proceedings of IASS 2018

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Tomohiro Tachi

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Tomohiro Tachi claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Tomohiro Tachi before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Tomohiro Tachi ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Tomohiro Tachi

In research: Tomohiro Tachi appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Tomohiro Tachi in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Tomohiro Tachi is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1982 births, 21st-century Japanese architects, 21st-century Japanese mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Tomohiro Tachi outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Tomohiro Tachi in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Tomohiro Tachi means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Tomohiro Tachi out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tomohiro Tachi in simple terms?

Why does Tomohiro Tachi matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Tomohiro Tachi?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Tomohiro Tachi.