Comments on: Brain Teaser: Rule the World!

By: shel

shel — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:57:23 +0000

Tsk, tsk — too complicated, all of you. Here’s the thing: lay the two sheets next to each other, so that together they measure 17″ (8.5×2). Then mark where one end of that length begins, pick up that page, and lay it on top horizontally. The difference in length (17-11) is six inches. Double it to make a ruler.

By: sherbet

sherbet — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:22:45 +0000

that is a relly cool way of doing it, I would have never thought of that. I like Craigs suggestion but it would be a bit tricky trying to fold a piece of paper into 11 equal pieces…….

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:38:54 +0000

I folded one sheet in half top to bottom, this made an edge of 5 1/2″. I set it along the short side of the unfolded sheet and got a 3″ mark. I then unfolded the first sheet and marked every 3″ along the 11″ side of the first sheet. I was left with a 2″ mark which I measured from my 3″ mark to produce a 1″ mark and filled in the rest of the inch marks on the original sheet.

By: Meri

Meri — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 04:15:27 +0000

Some of you people are really…MATHY…

By: Aemi

Aemi — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:03:06 +0000

Hah, gotta be careful with your method, Jaime. My fist’s less than three inches across at the knuckles, and my whole hand spread out is less than 6.
So I’d have some wonky roofs.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:28:34 +0000

Since I don’t often keep cash around, I can’t use the dollar bill method. I guess I could use the folding methods, but I keep a link in my favorites to “printable rulers.” It prints out a perfect ruler on standard sheets of paper.

Or, I use my hand. Spanned open from pinky to thumb, it’s about 8 inches. Or my arm, from elbow to wrist, is close enough to a foot for estimation. Wouldn’t really work to draw stuff to scale, though.

By: Miss Cellania

Miss Cellania — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:12:29 +0000

For some reason, I can’t see a way to get to page two from the front page. But when I went to the comments, I can see “Pages: 1 2″.

I could’ve figured this one out really fast IF I had known the dimensions of a standard sheet. However, I know my thumb is exactly two inches -one inch to each knuckle.

By: septer

septer — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:12:21 +0000

aargh…ignore the ‘(1/8thof 12.01)’

By: septer

septer — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:10:43 +0000

well no i am wrong in my explanation above. folding 3 times will give you 1/8th (1/8th of 12.01 ) and 4 times will give you 1/16th.

Also you won’t get a 12.01 square…you’ll get 8.5 inch square if you tear the bottom part.

By: septer

septer — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:04:15 +0000

Craig,

Your comment reminded me of a challenge we used to try to tackle when in school – folding a piece of paper more than 7 times. It becomes pretty tough. Yet you can implement your suggestion by not making all the folds together. You can first fold the paper in half, open it, fold it this time to bring one edge to the center fold. Repeat by bringing the edge again to the new fold and so on…but the problem is in the end what you’ll get is not 1/11th of the length. After 6 folds using above method, you’ll get 1/12th of the 11 inches = 0.9something.

But you could tear the paper (bottom part of figure 2 on next page) and get a 12.01 square and apply the above method and get 1.000something.