The mathematically eco-friendly way to wrap presents
Mathematician Warwick Dumas with Bluewater has devised a formula to determine the perfect amount of gift wrapping necessary to wrap a gift.Ready? The length of wrapping paper should be as long as the side of the gift with no more than 2 cm allowed for an overlap. The width should be just a little more than the sum of the width and the depth of the gift.
For easy reference, here is the equation:
A1 = 2(ab+ac+bc+c2).
Got that? Or you could just cut a smaller piece and then do that lovely patch with the strip of paper if you mess up. Just make sure you're using some paper made from recycled content. Better yet, use some reusable gift bags that you reuse every year.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-10-2007 @ 8:00AM
Mat said...
Or how about just use brown paper bags and tie it with a nice ribbon? I just bought some (100% recycled) cards from madebygirl.com and the pack came wrapped like that - actually quite elegant once it's all done.
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12-10-2007 @ 11:42AM
Antangil said...
This makes sense as far as it goes, but shouldn't there be some kind of optimization term to keep people from ending up with 3 cm wide strips of paper (that most normal people then throw away)?
'Course, then you'd have to think about the surface areas of all the boxes you have to wrap... and their orientation with respect to the plane of the wrapping paper... and irregular boxes... someone should write a paper on this.
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12-10-2007 @ 4:31PM
Antangil said...
btw... above should be taken as humorous, not hostile. :-)