Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Goin' Home


I went to the Fairgrounds yesterday to pick up my entry 
in this year's fair. The Indiana State Fair ended Sunday night 
after the last bulb on the carnival was turned off.
I walked through the carnival area to visit another area 
of the grounds. It was amazing to see how quickly 
people had cleaned up their stuff, folded their tents, 
and left town. The grounds are already so tidy
you could almost say that the Fair had never been.


 I saw a couple pair of giant fiberglass bears that seemed
as though they were dancing. While they may have
looked as though they were dancing with glee,
I was amazed at how the entire carnival ride had 
been folded into itself to ride on a trailer.


It must be a pretty unique field of engineering 
to make a carousel or a roller-coaster fold 
into a small enough wad to fit onto a truck.




4 comments:

dive said...

I think it's the same obsession with origami that led NASA to design the James Webb Space Telescope's village-sized heat shield fold up into the size of a handkerchief and somehow have the ability to unfurl itself in deep space.
Those bears must scare the crap out of kids.

Speedway said...

They commissioned a famous origami guy to design the folds for it, an American who picked it up as a hobby, now has a career.
I've read about him, and seen documentaries, but can't recall his name. Sorry.

Speedway said...

Here it is - Robert Lang an "expert in the field of computational origami."
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/releases/2011/11-015.html

dive said...

Yay! Fun!