Synthstuff - music, photography and more...

The Eleventh Fold

Meet Britney Gallivan:
Photo of the 11th Fold, One More to go.
Alternate Direction Folding has the following limit:

Folding Paper in Half 12 Times
Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.
Through the Looking Glass, L. Carroll

Britney Gallivan has solved the Paper Folding Problem. This well known challenge was to fold paper in half more than seven or eight times, using paper of any size or shape.

In April of 2005 Britney's success was mentioned on the prime time CBS television show Numb3rs.

The task was commonalty known to be impossible. Over the years the problem has been discussed by many people, including mathematicians and has been demonstrated to be impossible on TV.

For extra credit in a math class Britney was given the challenge to fold anything in half 12 times. After extensive experimentation, she folded a sheet of gold foil 12 times, breaking the record. This was using alternate directions of folding. But, the challenge was then redefined to fold a piece of paper. She studied the problem and was the first person to realize the basic cause for the limits. She then derived the folding limit equation for any given dimension. Limiting equations were derived for the case of folding in alternate directions and for the case of folding in a single direction using a long strip of paper. The merits of both folding approaches are discussed, but for high numbers of folds, single direction folding requires less paper.

The article goes on to show Britney's maths and proofs -- the website is hosted by the Historical Society of her hometown. Cool stuff. I would put using gold foil at mildly cheating since it is so very malleable (the most malleable metal commonly available) but her work is clear and looks good. Fun stuff! Posted by DaveH at June 22, 2005 10:20 PM