Students Claim New Paper Folding Record 138
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."
Re:How appropriate (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
Education == Statism
Good libertarians OPPOSE all forms of education, particularly education about economics.