Paper-Strip Sculptures

Abstract

This paper introduces paper-strip sculptures, a physical mesh data-structure used to represent 2-manifold mesh surfaces for understanding topological and geometrical aspects of shape modeling with visual and tactual examples. With paper strips it is possible to construct simple paper sculptures that can convincingly illustrate a variety of ideas in shape modeling --- such as 2-manifold mesh surfaces, discrete Gaussian curvature, and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem --- with hands-on experiments. Such sculptures can also represent links, knots and weaving. Paper-strip sculptures are also useful to represent and understand non-orientable surfaces such as the projective plane and the Klein bottle.