Lang Paper 1 Q2

[Mariam Obregon]

Andit is not always square, to boot. This is not necessarily due to imprecision in manufacturing, though. Kami, like all machine-made papers, has a definite grain, which comes from the manufacturing process. It is made on a continous belt moving through a paper pulp slurry, and the motion of the belt tends to align the paper fibers along a given direction. (You can easily see the effect of this alignment by trying to tear a sheet of newspaper; it will tear much more cleanly in one direction (with the grain) than the other (across the grain).) Paper absorbs moisture from the air, and a change in humidity will cause a slight change in the size of the paper. But because of the grain, machine-made papers swell more in one direction than the other. That means that even if the paper was square when it left the factory, it might not be square when you open the package if the humidity is different where you live.

Foil paper is often quite thin and is usually fairly strong, but the big property that it brings to the origami artist is that it is malleable. Or rather, the metal part is malleable. This means you can shape the paper into curves and crimps, and it will hold its shape. Thus, foil paper allows one to fold curved, organic shapes that have a much more natural appearance.

Despite its annoyances, I folded with tissue foil almost exclusively for several years. But not any more. As I got over my initial infatuation, I eventually began to perceive problems in this material.

When the great Japanese master Akira Yoshizawa began visiting the West in the latter half of the twentieth century, his audiences were astounded at the organic, lifelike forms he had created. Much of the magic arose from his folding technique; rather than making every crease sharp, he incorporated soft creases, curved creases, and gentle, rounded forms. And yet, despite the softness of form, the folded figures themselves were often rigid, almost shell-like; they easily withstood the rigors of travel and retained their original form. The secret was a folding technique invented by Yoshizawa, called wet-folding.

For the origami folder, sizing is what makes wet-folding work. When you dampen the paper, the water dissolves the sizing, making the paper softer and more malleable; when the paper dries, the sizing bonds the paper fibers together in their new configuration, making the resulting shape permanent. The more sizing there is in the paper, the greater the contrast between foldability when wet, and rigidity when dry. Thus, wet-folding requires usage of sized papers, and the greater the amount of sizing in the paper, the more suitable that paper is for wet-folding.

So, how (short of interrogating the manufacturer) do you tell if a paper has enough sizing to make it good for wet-folding? There are a couple of answers, but the easiest is, with a little experience, you can tell by feel, particularly with thick papers. If the paper feels fairly stiff, crisp, and a little springy, then it probably has been sized. You can also experiment: dampen a sheet (by wiping with a damp cloth); if it becomes noticeably easier to manipulate, then the dampness has dissolved the sizing, and it will probably be good for wet-folding as well.

Wet-folding as I have described it requires heavily-sized, fairly thick papers. There are many beautiful papers in the world, but relatively few of them are suitable for wet-folding because they are too thin, lack sizing, or both. Furthermore, there are many origami figures that exploit the two colors on opposite sides of the paper. Traditional origami paper is colored differently on the two sides, but most art papers are not. Yoshizawa developed a folding paper that solves all three problems at once: in English-speaking countries, the technique is called back-coating. it consists of gluing two thin sheets of paper together using a water-soluble adhesive. The result is thick enough to wet-fold, can be colored differently on each side of the paper, and best of all, the adhesive material acts as the sizing agent, permitting the resulting sandwich to be wet-folded.

To backcoat two sheets of paper, you need two thin sheets, a flat surface, and a water-soluble paste; wheat starch is a common material. The first sheet is glued down to the flat surface around its edges, using a bit of the paste. The top surface is then coated with the paste, and the second sheet laid down over it. The entire sandwich is rolled to eliminate any air bubbles and to insure a good joint between the sheets; then the result is allowed to dry. (Gluing the first sheet down by its edges is a necessary step; it holds the paper flat during drying. Without this step, the paper would curl and buckle as it dries.) When the entire sandwich is dry, it is cut away from the backing, and trimmed to square. From there, one can wet-fold the material as described above.

On the surface, wet-folding and thin paper would seem to be at cross purposes. After all, in wet-folding, we rely on the thickness of the paper to help the model hold its shape. Furthermore, many of the beautiful thin papers that are available have little or no sizing at all. While sizing is normally incorporated into the paper during the manufacturing process, it is also possible re-apply sizing to the sheet even after manufacture, thus allowing wet-folding and a remarkable degree of shaping.

Many of the good thin papers for folding are handmade, and most of them are made from plant fibers other than wood pulp. In general, you should avoid papers made from wood pulp (which takes in the vast majority of the paper made in the world). Wood pulp for paper is made by grinding up wood chips by one of two processes. Thermo-mechanical processing (TMP) primarily uses heat, steam, and grinding to break the chips down into individual fibers; chemical pulp uses acid and other harsh chemistry to break down the cellulose and lignins (and incidentally, gives paper mills their distinctive, and long-ranging, smell). TMP must grind the chips into small bits for the steam to do its work, and so, despite its (relative) environmental friendliness, the paper fibers are shorter and weaker than those in chemical pulp. Most commercial paper is made of a blend of the two, with lower grades (like newsprint) having a higher proportion of the short-fibered TMP pulp.

All this talk of dinner settings leads naturally to the next novelty material: edible origami. The general rule of origami is, if a material is sheet-like and accepts a crease, it can be folded into something. Sometimes, it can be eaten, too!

Origami artists are familiar with folding metal as part of foil paper or tissue-foil laminates and their ilk. While these materials include paper as part of the sandwich, it is also possible to fold metal directly. The closest to traditional paper folding is to use thin foil, such as household aluminum foil. It is very difficult to fold this material neatly, however; all but the simplest origami from foil ends up looking wrinkled and cluttered. (The paper in foil paper or laminates provides much-needed stiffness that helps resist small-scale wrinkles.)

A third possibility is to fold from paper and then replicate the folded shape in metal, which is how I and my collaborators created my origami bronze and stainless steel metal sculpture. The origami figure can be folded from any type of paper, then a mold made from it, either directly, or using the lost-wax (or rather, lost-paper) process. If you use the latter process, you should be sure to use an all-cellulose paper, not a clay-coated paper, as the latter will leave inorganic residue in the mold after it has been burned out.

It also feels normal to write an old-fashioned blog post about ways to tackle an analog anything. Thank you, trees, for giving your lives for this paper-pencil AP English Language & Composition exam. We will gladly sit in rows, facing front, many feet apart, in your honor.

Tell students to use a pen that feels comfortable in their hands. A cheap plastic Bic that gobs up is not the way to go. If your students have the means, tell them to go to an office supply store and splurge on a nice one with an ergonomic grip. They will be writing for two solid hours, so preventing hand fatigue may make that last essay less painful.

There is an argument to be made that students should do first the one they think they can knock out of the park. They start confident with the one they know they can write well and save for last the one they think will trip them up.

Students can think of the free response section like three bank accounts, each of which contains 40 minutes. If they do the first one in 35 minutes, they can then donate that five minutes to another prompt. If they do the second one in 35 minutes, they have given themselves ten extra minutes (50 total) on the third prompt. That alone might be a good reason to do the most difficult last.

No pancakes or cereal! Students need long-burning fuel to sustain them through a three-hour exam. Carbs will give them a quick burst and a crash, so meat and eggs are in order. Vegan students can scramble up a nice block of tofu, but they should stay away from orange juice, soda, bagels, and other simple carbs.

We all know that the teenage brain is elsewhere at 8:00 am, so May 12 is going to be tough for some of our babes. There need to be no late nights in the days leading up to the exam; they need a minimum of eight hours of sleep May 9, 10, and 11.

This section includes recent GCSE English Language past papers from AQA, Edexcel, Eduqas, OCR and WJEC. If you are not sure which exam board you are studying ask your teacher. Past papers are a fantastic way to prepare for an exam as you can practise the questions in your own time. You can download each of the exam board's papers by clicking the links below.

Question 4 is going to ask you to refer to the later section of the text. If Q1 refers to paragraph 1, Q2 refers to paragraph 2, Q3 asks you to refer to the organisation of the ideas in the whole text, Q4 pinpoints back in again now that you have an overview of the whole paper.

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