it’s only 10:40. and I’ve already finished my lunch.

Noah!

Job!

Nostradamus!

These need no explaination.

What do you call cheese that’s not your cheese?

Nacho cheese.

Tonight, You Can Awesome will be on the Fuse Network (Canadian MTV) show “Munchies”. Check it out!

For the uninitiated, “You Can Awesome” is the latest Mike Mohan production. It’s a spoof of a 1980’s kids TV show, with math, pickles, and mechanical function-based engineering thermonuclear reactive devices.

Check out the newly updated site at http://www.youcanawesome.com/

The Question

Mike Mohan asks:

okay, there’s this question out there. if you have a piece of paper, and you fold it in half (you following me?) and then you fold it in half again, and then you fold it in half again… there’s some theory out there that says there’s only so many times you’ll actually be able to continue folding it. is this true? couldn’t you find a way to break that rule, by either getting a piece of paper that is ultra-thin and a square mile wide? or making the paper wet. who comes up with these sorts of problem questions anyways, and what’s the actual applicable use for it (except in origami competitions, i suppose)?

The Answer

Interestingly enough, I remember when we first heard about this “law”. It was on a field trip in middle school, and we were sitting across from each other on the bus, and spent the next 45 minutes ripping pages out of our notebooks and trying to fold them. Weird.

Okay, so, this is one of those “everybody knows” questions. BUT, like many of these, it turns out to be untrue!

There’s this girl. Her name is Britney Gallivan. She’s from Pomona, CA, and she’s apparently wicked intelligent. She, in her junior year of high school, derived an equation that allows one to calculate the length required to fold a piece of paper in half X number of times in a single direction. That equation is:

PI * t n n
L = ——– * (2 + 4) * (2 - 1)
6

where t=thickness of the paper, n is the number of single-directional folds you want to do, and L is the length required of the paper.

In January of 2002, Britney Gallivan folded a piece of paper in half 12 times. I expect that she went somewhere in Pomona and acquired a long-ass piece of thin paper in order to accomplish the feat.

Here’s a picture of her doing her thing.

For this, if I had the power, I would award a place on the House of Rock Award Plaque.

The people who come up with these questions are trying to demonstrate properties of mathematics involving dividing things in half. They are also trying to keep their students interested.

The applicable use is probably something to do with storage on the space shuttle. Or compression ratios for long, thin cables. Or just to be awesome at parties. Or something like that. I know I’d go to a party if there was going to be a paper folding exhibition…