Chad Thornton’s seminar group got set a problem by Hugh Dubberly last week:
“Using 2 sheets of ordinary 8.5 x 11 inch paper, create a structure that supports the weight of 10 pounds worth of books for 30 seconds. How tall can you make that structure?”
I dimly remember something in, I think, Charles Seife’s “Zero: the biography of a dangerous idea”; which described the counterintuitive process of folding a single sheet of paper enough times for its thickness to become exponentially large-enough to reach the moon.
Or something.
[a-HA! Apparently, folding an A4 sheet of paper 44 times will get you to the moon. Googlesnuffled noosphere post-facts here and here]
Anyway – go and weigh in with your solutions over at BrightlyColouredFood.
Petafloptimism 
You would not believe the number of times American highschool students have e-mailed me asking to use that piece in their school project, claiming they’ll give credit.
All I ever want to know is what grade they got for it, but do they ever write back? Noooooooo!
this is a classic structural/civil engineering task.. i’m racking my brain to find out where i saw it, but there was some documentary i caught a while back where this was discussed and the winning entry in the class was something obscene like 7 feet.
the trick to the task (and apparently the lesson to learn!) is to use the qualities of the material you’re working with. like concrete can withstand massive pressures but not shearing forces, paper has great tensile strength but not compression (pull a piece of A4 apart vs push it together).
i imagine the answer uses cantalevers and thousands of tiny strips of the A4.
there’s gotta be something online.
all i could find was this paper on the tensile strength of paper. they even wet the paper and measured the difference – keewl!
http://www.cape.canterbury.ac.nz/courses/ENGR250/Example1.pdf
this is a classic mechanical/civil engineering task.. i’m racking my brain to find out where i saw it, but there was some documentary i caught a while back where this was discussed and the winning entry in the class was something obscene like 7 feet.
the trick to the task (and apparently the lesson to learn!) is to use the qualities of the material you’re working with. like concrete can withstand massive pressures but not shearing forces, paper has great tensile strength but not compression (pull a piece of A4 apart vs push it together).
i imagine the answer uses cantalevers and thousands of tiny strips of the A4. though imagining isn’t much help – in my head my solution is 40 feet tall.
there’s gotta be something online.
all i could find was this paper on the tensile strength of paper. they even wet the paper and measured the difference – keewl!
http://www.cape.canterbury.ac.nz/courses/ENGR250/Example1.pdf
this is a classic mechanical/civil engineering task.. i’m racking my brain to find out where i saw it, but there was some documentary i caught a while back where this was discussed and the winning entry in the class was something obscene like 7 feet.
the trick to the task (and apparently the lesson to learn!) is to use the qualities of the material you’re working with. like concrete can withstand massive pressures but not shearing forces, paper has great tensile strength but not compression (pull a piece of A4 apart vs push it together).
i imagine the answer uses cantalevers and thousands of tiny strips of the A4. though imagining isn’t much help – in my head my solution is 40 feet tall.
there’s gotta be something online.
all i could find was this paper on the tensile strength of paper. they even wet the paper and measured the difference – keewl!
http://www.cape.canterbury.ac.nz/courses/ENGR250/Example1.pdf
Even though I’ve been working at a web design company for several years, I can’t solve that paper task…. Hmmm, I’m getting desperate :((
Ryan, web designer http://www.astra-design.com