The Logic Behind Metric Paper Sizes

Oily Pakora writes "Those of us in the United States are so used to our Letter and Legal paper sizes. We've seen the A4 paper size option in our printer trays and in printer preference menus. Metric sizes used almost everywhere in the world, save for the US and Canada. Here is an interesting article that discusses all of the aspects of metric paper. For those who enjoy a bit of math, did you know that in the Metric paper system, the height-to-width ratio of all pages is the square root of 2? This means that you can place two sheets of A4 side-by-side and they will equal an A3 sheet exactly, and two sheets of A3 will equal an A2."

Comments

Re:2 x A4 = A3

[holizz]

I didn't know that until I saw it on the Open University. Mind you I was 7 at the time or some equally long-ago age. I didn't know A0 existed until I read that article though. Now maybe we need an article explaining American paper sizes to the rest of the world?

It's golden

[msblack]

It's called the "Golden Rectangle." Ask anyone who has seen the Disney educational feature Donald [Duck] in Mathematic Land and they can tell you, it is indeed a very special shape with lots of interesting properties.