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

Such committment

[grub]

This great feat will ensure tenure for the good professor.

How appropriate

[brian0918]

How appropriate that they would use toilet paper in a feat demonstrating how worthless college degrees have become.

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

So fucking true. Those retards at MIT do nothing but shit and fold toilet paper all day. Compare that to my education in the REAL WORLD and you can see what a waste of time formal education is.

Re:How appropriate

[eleuthero]

A local high school (albeit a private boarding type of one) used connections they had with college students in a paper folding club to make use of the club's access to MIT buildings (in this case, a really long hallway). This has nothing to do with the college's academic programs but rather with its social programs.

Re:How appropriate

[ALeavitt]

Yeah, what kind of jackass would want to pursue knowledge just for the sake of knowledge? They should have some kind of institution where those wackos are all segregated so that they can do their useless research in peace and not be a nuisance to the rest of us conscientious workers.

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than the fact that this attempt was made on a college campus, what does it have to do with a college degree? They're not college students.

Re:How appropriate

[HappyHead]

Would have worked better for that if they'd used the TP with diploma-print on it.

My first thought was that you were excessively bitter or something, but then I remembered how I felt about it myself when I walked away from university without paying for the diploma I'd finished the requirements for, because having it and telling local employers I had it would have actively harmed my job prospects at the time. The local employers had already all been burned by the idiots who cheated their way through a comp.sci degree without ever actually touching a computer, you had a better chance getting hired for computer stuff in town if you were a homeless bum who dropped out of grade school than a graduate of CS from my university... Many years later I actually forked out the $25 for the paper because the they offered me the chance to come back and flunk cheaters out. It was worth it just for that, and they even paid me a little bit to do it.

Re:How appropriate

[brian0918]

What kind of knowledge was gained from this exercise? The proper method and means for wiping Godzilla's ass?

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

We used to have them. They were called asylums for the insane. Then most of them got shut down. :(

Re:How appropriate

[brian0918]

They're not college students.

But they all will be soon enough. Then they'll be paying $50k a year to fold toilet paper.

Re:How appropriate

[HappyHead]

What kind of knowledge was gained from this exercise?

Well, for one, the high school students in question now have an excellent grasp of just how fast exponential increases really can get. You'd think that toilet paper is pretty thin, right? And folding it in half doesn't really make a noteworthy increase in thickness, it's still really thin - but do it again, and you've got 8 sheets thickness, then 16, then 32, 64, 128, and so on, until you've got 2^13 sheets thickness of toilet paper, just from folding it in half, and suddenly it's not so thin. For people who've been doing advanced math most of their lives, that's not much of a realization, but for kids who are just learning about things like that, it's an eye opener.

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares about people becoming educated? That doesn't affect my profit margin in the slightest.

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

Education == Statism

Good libertarians OPPOSE all forms of education, particularly education about economics.

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

How else are we supposed to welcome our new Japanese nuclear mutated overlord?

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a toilet paper manufacturer and I approve of this.
This should be part of the regular math edication.

Re:How appropriate

[mangu]

Education == Statism

Good libertarians OPPOSE all forms of education, particularly education about economics.

Your propaganda is stupid. Therefore you are uneducated. My conclusion is that you are a libertarian.

Please turn in your bust of Keynes and your autographed first editions of "Das Kapital" and Mao's Red Book.

Re:How appropriate

[bestalexguy]

Modders, please, don't push "Informative" when you mean "Insightful"

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I'm sure paper folding skills will get them far in Business Management or Human Resources. Oh, *toilet* paper? Politics, then.

Re:How appropriate

[mangu]

How appropriate is the name of OrigaMIT president, Jason Ku.

In Portuguese the word for asshole is "cu". In this context, his interest for toilet paper seems entirely natural.

 

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

Education == Statism

State-run, mandated education == Statism.

Teaching kids about folding and exponential progression is nice. Taking the kids to MIT is really cool. Breaking a folding record not involving proteins is kinda lame.

Re:How appropriate

[redemtionboy]

Is that why the more economic classes you take the more likely you are to be a libertarian?

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/studying-economics-makes-you-more-likely-to-be-a-conservativelibertarian/

Re:How appropriate

[Mr. Slippery]

Is that why the more economic classes you take the more likely you are to be a libertarian?

You've got the causality reversed. Those smart and informed enough to see through capitalism know that what's taught in the typical economics class is as disconnected from the reality of human labor and natural resources being used to meet human wants and needs as an astrology class is from the reality of cosmology; while those naive enough to subscribe to the inherently contradictory theory of "libertarian capitalism" line up to become more deeply indoctrinated in the Holy Doctrine.

Call me when economists learn to subtract.

Re:How appropriate

[lwsimon]

Selection bias. As a libertarian, it's obvious to me that the simple fact of becoming a libertarian means that you are likely to be interested enough in Economics to take classes.

Re:How appropriate

[redemtionboy]

That's like saying Christians never take a biology class because they are smart enough to see through the disconnected reality of evolution. Economics has inherently nothing to do with the environment and there is nothing to say that there can't be a capitalistic society that is environmentally friendly, as such things are based in social desire, behavior and structure and not in economics. Economics is very much a science with historical precedence and consistency.

How is the term "Libertarian capitalism" even remotely contradictory? Libertarianism implies a strong belief in individual liberties and freedoms, that we are all free to choose for ourselves. Capitalism allows the consumer the freedom to choose who and which they purchase goods from. Seem like very hand in hand beliefs to me.

Now, you may disagree with Libertarian ideology, but you don't even seem to have a grasp on the fundamentals of economics. You seem to insist that the more informed someone becomes about something the more wrong their opinions are. It would be one thing if there was a sudden jump that all economics majors were libertarians or that it had the highest percentage of libertarians but it's not. There's a direct relation between each incremental economic class a person takes and the more likely to have libertarian beliefs, beginning with 1 class.

Re:How appropriate

[rpresser]

Some internet users (albeit at least one of them an Anonymous Coward) hijacked a thread about paper folding to pass judgement on college degrees, college academic programs and similar topics. This has nothing to do with social programs

Re:How appropriate

[locallyunscene]

Ugh. GP comment is willfully ignorant, but lumping Keynesian economics with communism is just as willfully ignorant.

Re:How appropriate

[redemtionboy]

I can't say the same for myself. I didn't subscribe to libertarian ideals until after I learned more about economics and historical precedent with foreign policy. Obviously there are still Democrats and Republicans who have interest in economics, or there wouldn't be such contrasting opinions on the subject matter. Unfortunately this study didn't survey the students before and after, but I would note that the more economic classes a student took the more likely they were to be libertarians, so I would suggest the relationship seems to suggest the classes have an influence in ideology as it is a build rather than just a jump at a certain point.

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

"Those smart and informed enough to see through capitalism..."

Evil capitalism paved the way for the peace and prosperity that enabled socialism to to happen without murder and mayhem. Granted, capitalism - like just about anything - can be used for evil, but when people go around yapping about "Big" this and "Big" that they should remember that all those "Bigs" - with the exception of "Big Government" - have made the world possible. Are "Big Rich People" like George Soros good or bad? How did they make all that money? Are they evil when they exert via the electorate their will over entire countries?

But let's not even go that far. You speak of indoctrination. Who isn't indoctrinated? Only those to whom absolute knowledge is accessible are not indoctrinated in some fashion. Regardless of the number of degrees we have, the extent to which we self-educate, the absolute breadth of our genius, we all believe something because we just don't know how it works. Now, I personally don't subscribe to any religion (I'm mostly an Absurdist), but no one can explain why the universe is, and that means that everyone - every last person on Earth - at some point takes something on faith. Or trust. Whatever. (There was a discussion here a couple days ago about the difference between the two, but I'm calling it semantics for this argument.)

Sit on your high horse and proclaim libertarians stupid; capitalism evil; God dead. But don't forget that the libertarian, capitalist, Jesus-freaks made possible the lazy, progressive, douchebags.

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

and your user name can be pronounced phonetically as "man goo" which is slang for male ejaculate. Funny how words work.

Re:How appropriate

[Pinky's Brain]

Since when are modern conservatives libertarian?

Re:How appropriate

[Crudely_Indecent]

It would have been easier to accomplish using pennies and requiring the students to provide them. Pair the students up and require them to start with 1 penny and double the money back and forth X number of times. .01 * 2^13 = $81.92. Maybe to 2^10 ($10.24) is a little more realistic for high school students. At the end, pool the money and have a pizza party.

I'd be willing to bet that the goal of the exercise wasn't to teach the students anything. It was to get the teachers name into the record books. FTA: "After several failed attempts..."

Tanton has been trying to break that record for a while, and he needed help from MIT and his students to do it. Personally, I hope the MIT origami club decides to break this new record before it can be published. Tanton shouldn't be using public resources and student labor to break records.

Re:How appropriate

[scot4875]

In my experience, the MO for libertarians is that they, without fail, think they are smarter than *everyone* else around them, *particularly* non-libertarians.

I had one that I was in a discussion with; he had never heard of high frequency trading, and I was explaining why I thought it was such a worthless money-extraction scheme. Even though this douchebag had never even heard of HFT before, he sat there and told me how I was wrong, and that it was a good thing, and that I just hated profit.

--Jeremy

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though this douchebag had never even heard of HFT before, he sat there and told me how I was wrong, and that it was a good thing, and that I just hated profit.

Just becuase he was a douchebag doesn't mean

you weren't wrong or
you didn't just hate profit.

You could have cleared that up for him (us), right? But perhaps you didn't.... ;^)

Re:How appropriate

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, what BS (pardon the pun)...

You could have gotten the diploma originally and not put it on your job application or resume. How bout that?
But you instead claim you went the self immolation route?
Then you went back and you paid $25 and they paid you a little bit to do it...

Yeah, do you think we should believe this? If it doesn't make sense, it's usually not true...

Who's the one that's excessively bitter here?

Re:How appropriate

[petman]

You skipped 4.

What kind of knowledge was gained from this exercise?

Well, for one, the high school students in question now have an excellent grasp of just how fast exponential increases really can get. You'd think that toilet paper is pretty thin, right? And folding it in half doesn't really make a noteworthy increase in thickness,

Now you have 2 sheets thickness

it's still really thin - but do it again, and you've got 8 sheets thickness

Now you should have 4 sheets thickness, not 8

, then 16, then 32, 64, 128, and so on, until you've got 2^13 sheets thickness of toilet paper, just from folding it in half, and suddenly it's not so thin. For people who've been doing advanced math most of their lives, that's not much of a realization, but for kids who are just learning about things like that, it's an eye opener.

Re:How appropriate

[HappyHead]

I use 2-ply.

and yet

[redemtionboy]

Still no cure for cancer....

Re:and yet

[blair1q]

First, paper folding. Then, protein folding. Then, a cure for cancer.

Then profit, of course.

Re:and yet

[guspasho]

I don't see YOU working furiously on a cure.

Re:and yet

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't see you doing what you just told others to do! Therefore, your complaint is invalid despite the fact that that has nothing to do with the truth value of your argument!"

Re:and yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the millions of people who have been cured of cancer.

Re:and yet

[Anonymous Psychopath]

First, paper folding. Then, protein folding. Then, a cure for cancer.

Then profit, of course.

I think this is the first post on /. where there wasn't a step "???" right before profit.

Re:and yet

[redemtionboy]

Actually I'm neuroscientist working on research at the University of Kentucky Hospital on various cures for cancer. So...there.

Re:and yet

[mwvdlee]

Then get back to work!

Re:and yet

[AndrewNeo]

The sad part is it's also true.

Re:and yet

[AvitarX]

I bet more time was spent looking for a cure for cancer than folding toilet paper that day. It's almost like some problems are harder to solve than others.

Re:and yet

[guspasho]

Not while you're idly commenting on /. articles, you aren't.

Re:and yet

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story, bro.

Re:and yet

[blair1q]

The ??? is implied in the protein folding. We're still just guessing at it.

Re:and yet

[the biologist]

We cure cancer all the time.

...just not your cancer, sorry.

Re:and yet

[Yaur]

I'm sure there is some "cure for cancer" equivalent to compiling

Re:and yet

[laejoh]

OB: xkcd!

Oh great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Something new for whiny Slashdotters with irrelevant lives to whine about and ask why it is relevant.

I, for one, congratulate them!

Re:Oh great!

[blair1q]

Had I mod points, I would dub thee -1, Offtopic.

Ironically

[topham]

Ironically they won't be this productive again once they hit industry for at least 5 years.

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.

[Stenchwarrior]

And 1.5869140625 feet long, right?

Re:Legit.

[pfafrich]

We can't actually tell it did not tear internally. It would really need to be unfolded again to ensure that.

Re:Legit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Setting aside that this whole exercise is pretty pointless ever since it was first proven by Britney Gallivan that you can make more than 8 folds - even though that was the commonly accepted maximum number of folds at the time - by doing the math and then simply trying it, and making 12 folds...

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

Not sure who 'the losers' would be. The people who made 12 folds before - i.e. that one girl? Anyway, they would have a point...

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

Define 'folded', then?

If I take a piece of sheet metal, bend it so that one end is at a 180Â angle to the other, do I now have a fold? Even though the moment I release it, it'll quite quickly flatten itself again with barely a curve to it?

I do think that it should stand on it's own. If there were some manner of formalized rules, it should be in there. Not in defense of 'losers', but in defense of what would constitute a folding of layers in general.

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.

[jd]

You could give it an MRI.

Re:Legit.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ancient Japanese have used folding in their swordmaking for centuries. Folding the metal strengthens it many times over.

Re:Legit.

[gknoy]

I believe it's because of the alignment of the metal substructures, and of having many layers, than the act of folding it itself, isn't it?

Re:Legit.

[eldepeche]

RTFA.

Not MIT, just happened there.

Re:Legit.

[__aamnbm3774]

Technically you could have told me to RTFS more accurately.

Regardless, this teacher is still lame.

Re:Legit.

[Terwin]

The metal is heated over a fire and folded, adding little bits of carbon to it.
Really they discovered a low-tech way of making high-carbon steel.

Re:Legit.

[mcmonkey]

?

This has very little to do with MIT. They just used a 825-foot "infinite" hallway that connects many of MIT's main buildings. The folding was done by high school students, under guidance of their teacher.

And so what if it was MIT? No adult should ever try to do something better than a high school student? Do we need to worry about hurting the feelings of a precious snowflake?

Gallivan's work is great. I certainly wasn't doing anything on that level at that age. But that doesn't mean no one should ever fold anything again.

When I was in high school there was a kid who could play guitar better than just about anyone. Does that mean everyone should stop playing guitar so they don't "outshine" him?

I think the real story here is, at MIT they consider 825 feet to be infinite.

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?

Re:Legit.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I take a piece of sheet metal, bend it so that one end is at a 180Â angle to the other, do I now have a fold? Even though the moment I release it, it'll quite quickly flatten itself again with barely a curve to it?

The sheet metal was folded before you released it. Unfolding something doesn't mean it wasn't folded to begin with.

Re:Legit.

[Anonymous Coward]

MRI measures the magnetic dipoles in water molecules. Unless they got it wet first, the MRI wouldn't tell much. But it would surely tear once wet.

Re:Legit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably not enough water to image it well.

Re:Legit.

[blair1q]

MRI measures the magnetic dipoles in water molecules

depends how you tune it

Re:Legit.

[blair1q]

the folding of a sword is irrelevant; it's just easier to keep the two halves aligned when starting to weld them with their own heat that way

as long as you can stretch and deform and fuse the material infinitely many times there's no limit other than time and energy to how many times you could fold it

paper is relatively non-stretchy and non-fusible, which is why the limit with a sheet of notebook paper is 7 or 8 times

Re:Legit.

[Citizen of Earth]

I have them all beat. Just take their 8192 layers and repeat that an infinite number of times, taping one layer at the end of each to the next bundle of 8192 layers. Infinite-ply toilet paper -- for the really tough jobs!

Re:Legit.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're quite right!
In fact, we should probably not advance any kind of science or math, because records and feelings are much more important!

How do you think the inventors of obsolete computer hardware feel towards AMD and Intel, for instance!

Re:Legit.

[blair1q]

the hammering and heat have a lot to do with it, too, in aligning metal grain.

Re:Legit.

[spiedrazer]

I'm thinking that the first fold of the 13 total folds created a sheet with 2 layers, so the additional 12 folds would yield 2^12 or 4096 total layers. Not sure where they came up with 6000 in the article. As to length, 15000 feet halved 13 times would be 1.83 feet, but the depth of the folds eats up a lot of length, which is why their bundle really couldn't fold that 13th time.

Re:Legit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the loser. The individual that helped them gain access to the hall.

The current record holder (http://pomonahistorical.org/12times.htm) besides discovering the formulas by which to determine how many times you can fold a material of given thickness using alternating folds or folds in the same direction also set out rules by which she and future competitors should be judged. There is a rule that, while the result does not have to be "free standing", you do have to have independently verified that 2^n unique layers are in a straight line. The final result as documented in the photos of the original article leaves a lot of doubt if that was achieved.

Re:Legit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on whether or not you include your toes.

Re:Legit.

[blair1q]

Think about that again. The rule is to fold a single, continuous piece of paper in half each time. You can only attach the ends of the two separate sets of folds, and then they aren't folded in half together, they're just stacked on top of each other. Not the same thing at all, or just rolling the toilet paper on a cardboard tube until it's the diameter of the universe would count as folding it.

Re:Legit.

[blair1q]

It's really only the outside layer that matters. If you can go from the top on that layer to the innermost two layers from that layer to the bottom outside layer, all the other layers must be included in the fold.

Unless you mean the 2^n layers are parallel to each other along a single bisector. That might take a little more mashing, but I don't see it as too far from where they are.

Re:Legit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that just brings me back to my argument. You suggest that "unfolding something" means it was folded before. I agree. But in this case, I'm not the one unfolding the sheet - the sheet is doing that all on its own.

It's the corollary to the statement that it should stand on its own: it should not 'unfold' on its own.

Re:Legit.

[zippthorne]

AND came up with the idea of using toilet tissue, IIRC.

Re:Legit.

[willy_me]

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

There are two reasons why Japanese swords are traditionally made from folded steel. Firstly, folding is used to purify the steel. With every fold sparks fly and impurities are burned from the metal. This was a very effective technique considering how old it is. But the resulting steel was still of much lower quality then what is mass produced today.

The second reason for folding the steel was to distribute carbon throughout the metal. After folding the steel 10 to 20 times to purify it, they would do it again to add carbon to the steel. Now you have to understand that only ~1/3 of the steel that comes from the original melt of iron ore is of sufficient quality to use. But some of that left over slag is of very high carbon content (and very brittle). So they would take a piece of purified steel and weld a layer of the high carbon slag onto it. Now by folding it ~20 times they distribute the carbon evenly throughout the steel resulting in a very hard steel even by today's standards. I owned a high quality kitchen knife that broke - carbon buildup in the blade. It was replaced but my point is that even with modern techniques* it is difficult to evenly distribute carbon in steel. The Japanese solved this problem long ago - it just takes an outrageous amount of work.

So the final Japanese blade would typically be made from a core of purified steel with the high carbon steel welded around the outside - like a jacket. Hardness and the ability to hold an edge comes from the high carbon steel. Flexibility and durability comes from the purified steel. There was more to it then just this, for example try googling "differential hardening", but it serves as a brief overview.

modern techniques* - One of the coolest new ways to make steel is via "powdered steel". Basically, when you melt all the alloys to make steel they do not always mix together well resulting in poor steel. Just try to imagine oil and water. Anyway, powdered steel solves this problem by grinding up all the elements of the alloy and manually mixing them together in powdered form. They are then pressed into a mould at high temperature - almost at the melting point. Everything fuses together and one is left with a perfect steel. It costs more to manufacture but it results in the highest quality steel you can get. Very popular with knives and chisels.

Re:Legit.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.
[...]
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.

If anything, they're adding to the legitimacy of Gallivan's work. She didn't go out to set a world record that would last for all eternity; she went out to do science. She added something unique to the world of human knowledge, and now others are extending that knowledge by standing on her shoulders.

You might find this sort of record-breaking one-upmanship distasteful. Fair enough. People will be people, competitive streak and all. Science is science.

Hold on

[swanzilla]

FTA:

"However, their '13th fold' was debatable in that it could not stand on its own without considerable support," Ku said in an email Tuesday.

Shitty deal.

Re:Hold on

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. All that work down the drain...

Rules?

[softWare3ngineer]

What constitutes a fold? more than a 90 degree change in direction? Any other special rules anyone can thing of?

Re:Rules?

[MrLogic17]

I don't think they have a true 13th fold, as definded by the previous record holder:

"For a sheet to be considered folded n times it must be convincingly documented and independently verified that (2n) unique layers are in a straight line. Sections that do not meet these criteria are not counted as a part of the folded section. "
http://pomonahistorical.org/12times.htm

Re:Rules?

[mcmonkey]

I don't think they have a true 13th fold, as definded by the previous record holder:

"For a sheet to be considered folded n times it must be convincingly documented and independently verified that (2n) unique layers are in a straight line. Sections that do not meet these criteria are not counted as a part of the folded section. "
http://pomonahistorical.org/12times.htm

You do realize by that definition, a "fold" just means rotating a section of paper some distance around an axis across the width of the paper? The 13th fold could be one degree.

If we add to the definition that the straight line must be perpendicular to each of the 2n layers, then the fold would have to go 180 degrees.

Re:Rules?

[zippthorne]

I'd say, take the most generous section and count the layers. ln(N)/ln(2) = number of folds.

Where did they get the paper?

[Maximum Prophet]

The article doesn't where they got one continuous strip of TP 13,000 feet long. Did they use multiple rolls attached together? As far a standing on it's own, a small amount of glue every now and then should help with that.

A thousand page book on my self is about 3 inches thick. If the TP is half the thickness of book paper, their block should be about 12 inches talk, 18 inches long and as wide as the TP they used.

Re:Where did they get the paper?

[swanzilla]

TFA:

After four hours of sometimes tedious toiling with the single-ply bathroom tissue that Tanton bought online at ToiletPaperWorld.com, he said he and the students from St. Mark's finally folded the paper a 13th time.

Apparently the toilet paper industry was unaffected by the dotcom burst.

Re:Where did they get the paper?

[suso]

TFA:

After four hours of sometimes tedious toiling with the single-ply bathroom tissue that Tanton bought online at ToiletPaperWorld.com, he said he and the students from St. Mark's finally folded the paper a 13th time.

Apparently the toilet paper industry was unaffected by the dotcom burst.

Shitty companies have a way of surviving. Now I know its literally true.

Re:Where did they get the paper?

[MrLogic17]

Very good question. The mentioned ToiletPaperWorld.com link has at best, 4,000 foot rolls. There must be some products not offered on the web site -OR- they got away with gluing/taping/bonding multiple rolls together.
http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/product.aspx?strSku=APM 740GREEN

Re:Where did they get the paper?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The article doesn't where they got one continuous strip of TP 13,000 feet long.

MIT Students: "Stuck on the toilet bowl . . . and there ain't nuthin' on the roll! . . . well you prove you're a man and you use your hand . . ."

Note to self: "Avoid shaking hands with MIT students."

Stanley Milgram's experiments pale in comparison.

MIT Dean: "What dumbass stole all of our bumwad?!?!"

MIT Professor (from the endowed throne of Scott Paper): "Um, we like . . . needed it for some important experiment . . . or something . . . we did put a few rolls around Harvard's Porcellian . . . "

Yawn...

[Stenchwarrior]

Call me when they accomplish the same feat with used toilet paper.

This is news...

[Anonymous Coward]

why?

it's the infinite corridor, not infinite hallway

[PJ6]

(re: video)... you show that you're not affiliated with MIT in any way if you screw that up.

most bogus work of fiction ever sold unravelling

[Anonymous Coward]

yet we continue to swear by it, 'raise' our kids based on it? devalue our own, & others' lives, based on it's stories? what a book?

Curious about MIT connection

[sheehaje]

Seeing the teacher has been trying this for 5 years, I wonder if any of his previous students became students at MIT, hence the connection? Not that one is needed, but would be an interesting side story.

Re:Curious about MIT connection

[jd]

Considering the teacher has been trying this for 5 years, the school principal is probably on the board of directors of one of the manufacturers.

Shall I set for a record

[Anonymous Coward]

of goatse posts per slashdot article?
Next week maybe...

war of the wor(l)ds no longer considered fictional

[Anonymous Coward]

paper (with text on it) must be compressed, distorted, vaporized, no longer original etc,,, so we're not further inconvenienced by further conflicting views.

Wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

How many Smoots is that?

Re:Wait!

[Stenchwarrior]

Smoot = 1.7m = 5.577428 feet.

2330.823454824514 smoots?

They increased by one fold...

[Culture20]

I bet they changed from 2-ply to single-ply. Makes all the difference when folding.

In the other news

[roman_mir]

In the other news Sheryl Crow has also been breaking a record, reusing the same ply of toilet paper since 2007.

The musician was heard saying: "It has been tough at times, but you can achieve anything if you just put your mind to it. Also try not to pay too much attention to the color of the thing".

Re:it's the infinite corridor, not infinite hallwa

[jd]

Medical News Update: Computer geeks are subject to brain scrambling via the Hall Effect.

Why

[zuckerj]

Why?

Re:Why

[Lord Ender]

To give an intuitive education in exponential growth.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, right?
Also, why did they go to the moon?
There's like, nothing there.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't the national debt an intuitive enough example?

Re:Why

[MareLooke]

There's human pollution now.

5 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you oposable thumbs. Now if they work on something like this just bigger and make it visible from the moon, aliens can see the signs of an advanced race inhabiting the earth.

In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

You UNFOLD toilet paper.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't it be toilet paper UNFOLDS YOU??2

So Cool

[FrankDrebin]

13,000 feet of toilet paper in half 13 times

Wow, they must really have their shit together.

Re:So Cool

[LS]

Wish I had mod points.... +1 funny!

Re:So Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Best comment -- exactly what I was thinking. At last someone has conquered this beast of a problem.

Re:most bogus work of fiction ever sold unravellin

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the truth. Twilight will be the death of civilization.

Folder or Scruncher?

[Solo-Malee]

I suppose none of the students were scrunchers ;-)

Myth Busters....

[scharkalvin]

The Myth Busters did this. I forget how many times they folded a piece of paper, but they used a steam roller for the final fold.

Re:Myth Busters....

[Anonymous Coward]

12, using alternate 90-degree folds. It could get a few more if folding at the same direction.

Re:Myth Busters....

[Anonymous Coward]

Episode #72, 2007 Season:
"It was impossible to fold a piece of letter-sized (8.5" × 11", 216 mm × 279 mm) 20 lb (75 g/m) copy paper with perpendicular folds more than seven times. The thickness of the paper grew geometrically with each successive fold, and after the seventh fold the paper was just too thick to fold without breaking. Breaking the rules of the challenge, Grant showed that folding a particularly thin sheet of paper in the same direction 4 times then 4 times the other way, it is possible to fold the paper 8 times. The MythBusters then laid out a football field-sized sheet of interconnected paper (170 × 220 ft (52 × 67 m)), and due to the reduction of its area-to-thickness ratio (and with help from a steam roller and a forklift), were able to perpendicularly fold the paper 11 times. Other methods of folding a piece of paper (such as with alternating folds) proved able to break the fold threshold of 7 for letter-sized paper, and perpendicular folds of more than 7 are theoretically possible with thinner paper." ---http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%282007_season%29#Seven_Folds

5 year effort woohoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't say much about the American education system that folding toilet paper is being passed off as some kind of high water mark of achievement.
Guess these kids find brain work boring.

How...

[McTickles]

Useful what they teach kids these days.

I can't help but feel irritated by this video; what a waste of time, and, potentially brains, although I dont think anything of value was lost, the good professor looks like an idiot anyhow.

Their parents will be glad to have paid tuition for this.

1 if by land, 2 if by sea, 3 if by outer space, 4,

[Anonymous Coward]

if by altered mutants.gov? have you heard something? death? to everybody? it's tonight? tomorrow? in between? thank god there's word., so even further arrangements can be made to conserve the royals & chosen ones as it was written again & again, 'til debt do us part?

I wish I had time in college for this much fun.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was too busy drinking beer and banging co-eds.

Not the whole story

[tchdab1]

They didn't even talk about the tons of pizza and barrels of prune juice that lead to the bowel movement that made 13,000 feet of folded toilet paper necessary.

Re:Not the whole story

[danlock4]

It might actually have been the stuff people drink for 24 hours prior to having a colonoscopy.

Toiletten Papier, ich lieb' dir!

They should donate the bumf to homeless shelters / charity; I don't live in a shelter, but TP is nice to have if the alternative is a wire brush, no matter how many times the metal has been folded.

WTF?

[LS]

Can I be the first to say that? Is this what people are aspiring to these days? Toilet paper folding records??? Is there some complex math or interesting folding dynamics involved here? What's the hook? Or are they just a bunch of obsessive compulsive retards?

Re:WTF?

[FrootLoops]

Well, it's really a paper folding record that happened to use toilet paper. These people have a weird hobby, but I have difficulty faulting them when MMOs eat up billions of person-hours yearly (my own estimate). Calling them "obsessive compulsive retards" is ignorant and needlessly insulting.

IMO

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone involved with this and the original toilet paper folding record should flunk/have their diplomas revoked/be fired - entirely serious.

This isn't a story...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've folded my toiletroll at least 15 times on itself before going near especially potent shit before!

A new sport

[wooptoo]

Wow, folding toilet paper. This should be an olympic sport.

Re:it's the infinite corridor, not infinite hallwa

[Anonymous Coward]

Good catch! Knowledgable alumni are very particular about calling it the 'corridor'. Being one, I'm curious: does anyone know which floor it was on? I can't tell from the pictures... (will have to ask when I attend 'MIThenge' this fall)

like the new chick on "House"

[Thud457]

You could have gotten the diploma originally and not put it on your job application or resume. How bout that?

That would be a lie of omission. Some people have standards of moral conduct. You might have to deal with this sort of thing when dealing with borderline Aspberger's nerds.