If you take a cube and you cut
it up into 27 smaller cubes
and then after that you take out
every cube on the face of the
original cube and then the cube
in the middle of the original
cube you end up with 20 cubes
left that kind of form a "frame"
of the original cube; that's a
level 1 Menger Sponge. To make
a level 2 Menger Sponge you
repeat the process on every one
of the 20 constituent cubes that
you made from cutting up your
original cube. So if you keep
going you eventually make a
three-dimensional fractal curve
that has zero volume and
infinite surface area. So that's
a Menger Sponge.
Are Menger Sponge was part of a
larger project called MegaMenger
sponsored by the Queen Mary
University of London and the
idea was that 20 sites around
the world would each build a
level 3 Menger Sponge so that
in theory we would have together
built a level 4 Menger Sponge.
And that's the largest Menger
Sponge thats ever been built
out of business cards.
So when we decided that we
wanted to build this sculpture
we thought that this was a great
way to not just do it within
our club, but also get the entire
MIT community involved.
We held club meetings, we held
study breaks and we got a ton of
people, from freshman to seniors
to graduate students to faculty
and staff, coming and folding
this thing with us.
The cool thing is, the Menger
Sponge actually has an
unexpected connection to MIT.
One of the first, if not the
first people to build this
structure out of business cards
was Dr. Jeannine Mosely who did
her PhD at MIT and she's
currently this tremendously
successful and prolific origami
artist.
It was almost 20 years ago that
I learned how to make the
business card cube from some
verbal instructions. Initially
I wasn't particularly excited
about the cube because its not
that interesting of a shape. But
after a while, my son who was
seven, I taught him how to make
the cubes and he was playing
with them and I had two cubes
that were seated side by side on
a table and I was just looking
at his cubes and I said, "Oh my
God, look at the flaps! You can
tuck them under each other,
like this, and if you do you'll
end up with two linked cubes."
They are very firmly attached to
one another and you can just add
more and more cubes and build
any structure that you can think
of. Around this same time, the
company that I was working for
changed its name. And all my co-
workers knew that I had been
doing origami with business cards
came by and gave me their old
business cards. So I had a very
large collection of business
cards to work with. And someone
was teasing me, "What are you
going to build with all those
cards?" And I said, "Oh, I don't
know. Maybe I'll build a level 3
approximation to a Menger Sponge.
I only need 48,000 cards to do that."
It took me ten years and I
finished it in 2005. And since
then a lot of people who've read
about it have said, "Hey, I want
to build one too!"
But what we didn't realize was
how much work building a level 3
Menger Sponge would be. Once we
started folding we were like,
"Ooo, this is going to be super
time-consuming and we clearly
bit off more than we can chew."
So instead of building a full
level 3 Menger Sponge we just
built one of the rings that forms
one of the faces. Which would be
eight level 2's and this would be
only 25,000 business cards.
We also heard recently from the
worldwide MegaMenger Project
that including us, when you
combine everyones builds together
built a level 4. And that's
absolutely insane in terms of the
number of business cards, the
number of man hours. And I think
to be a part of that, we're
super excited.
Why the Menger Sponge? I don't
know, there is just something
about it that. . . everybody
just seems captivated by it. And
it's important, I guess, when
you set out to build something
this big and you want to get
hundreds of people to help the
end goal needs to be something
that inspires them and makes them
persevere and keep going until
its done.