Most plastics are long organic polymers with a high molecular weight. When these long chains of monomers are prestretched in their manufacturing they have a high level of organization. When heated to their glass transition point, these prestretched plastics will contract in the dimention that they were prestrech. With the use of pigments (in our case, biopigments) we can select where and how the prestretched plastic contracts. By drawing on these pigments on the plastic and using infrared light from the sun, we can make the plastic fold. This is because in a flat sheet of prestretched plastic, drawing a dark line on the plastic will allow that section of the plastic to heat up and contract faster than the rest of the plastic. Having the dark line only on one side of the plastic will cause the plastic to fold toward that side as seen in figure 1

By having plastics fold, we can quickly prototype new designs of self polding by simply printing on biopigments onto plastic sheets and applying infrared light to the plastic. This can be applied to