Students Claim New Paper Folding Record

A group of 15 students along with their teacher are claiming a new paper folding record. The group claims to have folded (in the same direction) 13,000 feet of toilet paper in half 13 times, breaking the old 2002 record of 12 times. From the article: "[teacher] Tanton has been leading students from St. Mark's on attempts to break the record for five years. But after several failed attempts, Tanton asked the MIT origami club, OrigaMIT, to help him and his students get access to MIT's Infinite Corridor."

Comments

Legit.

[blair1q]

The losers complain that the folded unit can't stand on its own.

But I don't see a requirement that it stand at all, merely that it is folded. Which it is.

2^13 is 8192 layers.

The really interesting thing is that it doesn't tear. There's stretching and compressing involved in folding things, and toilet paper isn't all that structurally sound. Their folding method seems to make it flow properly to keep the stresses from damaging it.

Re:Legit.

[__aamnbm3774]

I don't like it because MIT is just trying to outshine a girl in high school. Britney Gallivan is the one who came up with the equations and broke the old stigma that a paper can only be folded in half 7 times.

Screw MIT and their infinite budget for media attention. Her equations showed you can indeed have more folds if your paper is long and thin enough. This 'professor' needs to find something more worthwhile to do besides take away from a kid who had a great discovery.

Re:Legit.

[v1]

That brings up an interesting question concerning steel folding, like what was done with japanese swords.

If you were to say, take a bar of copper 10 ft x 1" x 1/4", and bend it in the middle (fold it) and then when it was folded, beat it out so its back to 10' x 1" x 1/4", and repeat the process several times, you could theoretically get a lot more than 13 folds out of it. When you were done each layer would be like gold leaf though.

The thickness of the material is ultimately what causes problems with folding, which is why TP is a good choice. (the cheap stuff is really thin, and it is somewhat stretchable) But you can get metal down to an atom or three thick without TOO much work. (as with gold leaf)

I wonder if this would count?

I also wonder also how they obtained a single roll of TP that long, or did they have to patch together several rolls? I'm not talking about the little ones at home, I'm assuming they use the big (12" or so?) rolls used in public restrooms. Still, I don't think one of those would be enough, that looked like 3 or 4 of those rolls worth of TP, but maybe that was just the effect of it getting uncompressed and air into it that fluffed it up?