14-year-old Miles Wu folded origami pattern that holds 10k times its own weight (smithsonianmag.com)

Article summary

Miles Wu, a 14-year-old student, has developed a variant of the Miura-ori origami pattern that can hold 10,000 times its own weight, with potential applications in emergency shelters. Wu's innovation won the top prize of $25,000 at the 2025 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge. He spent over 250 hours designing, folding, and testing different variants of the pattern to achieve this result. The Miura-ori pattern has been used in various fields, including aeronautical engineering and biomedical devices.

Main themes

• Origami innovation
• Emergency shelters
• STEM education
• Material science
• Engineering applications
• Youth innovation

What commenters say

• The concept of using origami patterns for structural strength is not new, but the experimentation and measurement of its strength-to-weight ratio is a notable achievement.
• The idea of applying origami principles to submarine vehicles to increase resistance to pressure is theoretically possible, but it would require significant modifications to the design.
• The ability to hold 10,000 times its own weight is a remarkable property of the Miura-ori pattern, but it may not be directly applicable to real-world scenarios without further development.
• The importance of passionate learning and experimentation, as demonstrated by Miles Wu's six years of experience with origami, should not be underestimated in achieving innovative results.
• The potential applications of origami in various fields, including engineering and architecture, are vast and worthy of further exploration.
• The concept of using origami for emergency shelters is promising, but it requires further development to address issues such as scalability, durability, and multidirectional forces.
• The use of supplements like creatine may have cognitive benefits, particularly in situations where sleep is limited, but its effectiveness can vary depending on individual factors.
• The notion that one's ability to learn and absorb new information decreases with age is debatable, and may depend on factors such as field of study, prior knowledge, and individual cognitive abilities.