Using more than two miles of toilet paper and one infinite corridor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a group from St. Mark's School claim to have wiped out the world record for folding paper on Sunday. The group of 15 students and teacher James Tanton from the boarding school in Southborough claim to have folded 13,000 feet of toilet paper in half 13 times (with each fold in the same direction), which would break the record of 12 times set in 2002.
"It was hard, backbreaking work," said Tanton, a mathematics teacher/toilet paper-folder extraordinaire. "It's like Mount Everest. Of course we had to try." 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.
YouTube link.
Inside the 825-foot hallway that connects many of MIT's main buildings, Tanton said he and his students could fold without fear of interference from the wind. But there could be a wrinkle in Tanton's record-setting claim. Ku said he agrees that the group from St. Mark's clearly matched the record of 12 consecutive folds.
"However, their '13th fold' was debatable in that it could not stand on its own without considerable support," Jason Ku, president of OrigaMIT, said. "I am told that they will be trying this project again in the future with about twice as much paper, which I believe should result in success." Tanton said he was unable to preserve the final folded product because with more than 8,000 layers the toilet paper became too wobbly. But the group videotaped their efforts and the end result.
2 comments:
What an incredibly stupid waste of time, talent and resources. The teacher should be fired.
The students did it on their own time- and he's an extremely creative teacher, so it seems. To motivate a bunch of high schoolers to spend their free time folding paper and exploring mathematical concepts takes some doing.
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