Three open problems on folding/unfolding are discussed: (1) Can every convex polyhedron be cut along edges and unfolded at to a single nonoverlapping piece? (2) Given gluing instructions for a polygon, construct the unique 3D convex polyhedron to which itfolds. (3) Can every planar polygonal chain be straightened?

This thesis contains new results on the subject of polygonal structure reconfiguration. Specifically, the types of structures considered here are polygons, polygonal chains, triangulations, and polyhedral surfaces. A sequence of vertices (points), successively joined by straight edges, is a polygonal chain. If the sequence is cyclic, then the object is a polygon. A planar triangulation is a set of vertices with a maximal number of non-crossing straight edges joining them. A polyhedral surface is a three-dimensional structure consisting of flat polygonal faces that are joined by common edges. For each of these structures there exist several methods of reconfiguration. Any such method must provide a well-defined way of transforming one instance of a struc-ture to any other. Several types of reconfigurations are reviewed in the introduction, which is followed by new results. We begin with efficient algorithms for comparing monotone chains. Next, we prove that flat chains with unit-length edges and an-gles within a wide range always admit reconfigurations, under the dihedral model of motion. In this model, angles and edge lengths are preserved. For the universal

In this paper we consider deflations (inverse pocket flips) of quadrilaterals and pentagons. We characterize infinitely deflatable quadrilaterals by proving necessity of previously obtained sufficient conditions. Then we show that every pentagon can be deflated after finitely many deflations, and that any infinite deflation sequence of a pentagon results from deflating an induced quadrilateral on four of the vertices.

Given a polygon P in the plane, a pop operation is the reflection of a vertex with respect to the line through its adjacent vertices. We define a family of alternating polygons, and show that any polygon from this family cannot be convexified by pop operations. This family contains simple, as well as non-simple (i.e., self-intersecting) polygons, as desired. We thereby answer in the negative an open problem posed by Demaine and O’Rourke [9, Open Problem 5.3].

In this paper we study polygonal transformations through an operation called deflation. It is known that some families of polygons deflate infinitely for given deflation sequences. Here we show that every infinite deflation sequence of a polygon P has a unique limit, and that this limit is flat if and only if exactly two vertices of P move (are reflected) finitely many times in the sequence. 1