Say you are designing a reusable rocket (don't worry, it's just a thought experiment). A rather important part of a reusable rocket is the landing legs. However, random sticks won't do, you must also include shock absorbers. Enter, origami!
A few years ago (sorry I'm a bit late on this), researchers investigated the use of an origami structure to build a shock absorber. Their design includes multiple compressible hexagonal prisms. When one end of the chain is compressed, it causes a compression wave to travel up the structure. Subsequently, the prism then expands, which causes a rarefaction wave to also travel up the structure. However, the rarefaction wave travels faster than the compression wave, causing the two to meet, and cancel each other out. Why does this occur? I have literally no idea. I've been ruminating on this post for several months and still haven't found out.
Anyways, here's a photo of what the unit's fold pattern was:
