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.