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Comment by Adriana on February 13, 2012 at 11:31am

Hahaha, Neal!

Comment by Neal on February 9, 2012 at 2:14pm

Valentines day is cancelled. 14-02-12 = 0; mathematical proof.

Comment by doone on February 5, 2012 at 6:34pm

Submitted by:

Bella8236

Comment by doone on February 5, 2012 at 6:31pm

Submitted by: Unknown

Comment by Michel on February 5, 2012 at 6:04pm

@doone - This is nuts =)

Comment by doone on February 5, 2012 at 5:47pm

'Don't Make Me Do This!' The Equations Screamed

10:00 am

January 17, 2012

 

by ROBERT KRULWICH

Normally, this kind of thing is done with a pen or a pencil or a crayon, not with a graphing calculator. Numbers like to multiply, divide and subtract. They don't want to be words or pictures. That's not their job.

But if you've never been good at math, and you love to draw, here's a little revenge exercise. You can torture numbers into very unmathematical contortions — contortions that will make you smile.

1. Casual Greeting

For example: This dense equation, plotted on the right computer program, resolves into a phrase that you and everybody you know uses every day. Millions of people say it. Click on the equation to see what it is.

Click on the equation.

Enlarge

Comment by Chris on January 17, 2012 at 1:21am

I bought this book about Origami Math for my son. He was too young when I bought it, maybe he's ready for it now. Here's a neat lecture about Origami.

Comment by Michel on January 16, 2012 at 1:50pm

The last fold is really funny.
They struggle with this huge stack of paper likely to collapse at any time...

Comment by Adriana on January 16, 2012 at 12:35pm

Paper folding math is cool! :-)

Comment by Michel on January 16, 2012 at 12:18pm

It may look like a prank but these mathematics students from St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts aren't toilet papering the famed infinite corridor at MIT. Using intricate choreography and brute force, they're breaking a paper-folding record by completing 13 folds, a challenge that students at the school have been tackling for seven years with the help of teacher James Tanton.

Based on the thickness of a sheet of paper, a formula can be used to calculate the minimum length needed to fold it a given number of times. Paper roughly doubles in size with each fold and the sides become more rounded, making it harder and harder to bend. Wrinkles also have a significant impact, making the formula difficult to follow in practice. In addition, no single roll is long enough to fold thirteen times, requiring the group to tape together numerous rolls of industrial toilet paper 1.2 kilometers long.

To achieve the feat, the students first arranged and taped 64 layers of paper into the physical structure of the sixth fold. When you fold paper, the layers on the end form a pattern of peaks and valleys, so the configuration mimicked these layers to accommodate the 16 kilometers of paper inside. The students then proceeded to physically fold the stack. The final result was a 1.5-metre wide and 76-centimetre high wad comprising 8192 layers of paper.

Although no official rules govern the record, the students decided that the folds must be in one direction and that the complete structure should be freestanding.

Until 2002, it was thought that paper could only be folded a maximum of seven times. High school student Britney Gallivan dispelled the popular myth by resolving the mathematics and successfully folding a single roll of toilet paper twelve times in a record-breaking feat.

For more folding fun, check out the physics of crumpled wrapping paper or watch self-folding micro-origami.

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