Flat Foldings of Plane Graphs with Prescribed Angles and Edge Lengths

When can a plane graph with prescribed edge lengths and prescribed angles (from among $\{0,180^\circ, 360^\circ$\}) be folded flat to lie in an infinitesimally thin line, without crossings? This problem generalizes the classic theory of single-vertex flat origami with prescribed mountain-valley assignment, which corresponds to the case of a cycle graph. We characterize such flat-foldable plane graphs by two obviously necessary but also sufficient conditions, proving a conjecture made in 2001: the angles at each vertex should sum to $360^\circ$, and every face of the graph must itself be flat foldable. This characterization leads to a linear-time algorithm for testing flat foldability of plane graphs with prescribed edge lengths and angles, and a polynomial-time algorithm for counting the number of distinct folded states.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure

Steinitz Theorems for Orthogonal Polyhedra

We define a simple orthogonal polyhedron to be a three-dimensional polyhedron with the topology of a sphere in which three mutually-perpendicular edges meet at each vertex. By analogy to Steinitz's theorem characterizing the graphs of convex polyhedra, we find graph-theoretic characterizations of three classes of simple orthogonal polyhedra: corner polyhedra, which can be drawn by isometric projection in the plane with only one hidden vertex, xyz polyhedra, in which each axis-parallel line through a vertex contains exactly one other vertex, and arbitrary simple orthogonal polyhedra. In particular, the graphs of xyz polyhedra are exactly the bipartite cubic polyhedral graphs, and every bipartite cubic polyhedral graph with a 4-connected dual graph is the graph of a corner polyhedron. Based on our characterizations we find efficient algorithms for constructing orthogonal polyhedra from their graphs.Comment: 48 pages, 31 figure

Periodic Auxetics: Structure and Design

Materials science has adopted the term of auxetic behavior for structural deformations where stretching in some direction entails lateral widening, rather than lateral shrinking. Most studies, in the last three decades, have explored repetitive or cellular structures and used the notion of negative Poisson\u27s ratio as the hallmark of auxetic behavior. However, no general auxetic principle has been established from this perspective. In the present article, we show that a purely geometric approach to periodic auxetics is apt to identify essential characteristics of frameworks with auxetic deformations and can generate a systematic and endless series of periodic auxetic designs. The critical features refer to convexity properties expressed through families of homothetic ellipsoids

The Toric Geometry of Triangulated Polygons in Euclidean Space

Speyer and Sturmfels [SpSt] associated Gr\"obner toric degenerations \mathrm{Gr}_2(\C^n)^{\tree} of \mathrm{Gr}_2(\C^n) to each trivalent tree \tree with $n$ leaves. These degenerations induce toric degenerations M_{\br}^{\tree} of M_{\br}, the space of $n$ ordered, weighted (by \br) points on the projective line. Our goal in this paper is to give a geometric (Euclidean polygon) description of the toric fibers as stratified symplectic spaces and describe the action of the compact part of the torus as "bendings of polygons." We prove the conjecture of Foth and Hu [FH] that the toric fibers are homeomorphic to the spaces defined by Kamiyama and Yoshida [KY].Comment: 41 pages, 10 figure