Wrapping With A Conscience
By Leila Sattary
Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent, England, has found that Brits often overestimate the amount of wrapping paper they need, and predict that over one tonne of paper will be wasted this Christmas. To counter this, the centre is encouraging consumers to reduce their paper footprint and has published mathematical formulae to help calculate the amount of paper required for various shaped presents.
They called in Warwick Dumas from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Leicester, who provided a formula for Bluewater. In simple terms, it states that the paper should be the same size as the surface area of the object, plus 2cm for an overlap. Seems pretty obvious to me – surely that’s what most of us do already? Did they really need to pay a university mathematics professor to work that one out for them?Dumas claims he has gone into great detail on the topic of optimal wrapping, taking into consideration awkwardly-shaped objects and what to do if only a small non-square piece of wrapping paper remains. He explains, "Wrapping a cuboid diagonally uses strictly more paper than wrapping the traditional way except for an item with a square base, but wrapping diagonally uses a different shape of paper and so could be useful when only a small piece is left."
This might be just another example of pseudo-science, but Fiona Campbell-Reilly, Marketing Manager of Bluewater, has high hopes. “By using this formula, Bluewater shoppers can make an effort to become as green as their Christmas tree.” The shopping centre is now running ‘gift-wrapping workshops’ which aim to give a step-by-step guide on how to wrap presents in the most efficient way with the help of a bit of simple mathematics. The success of these ‘workshops’, clearly aimed at housewives with way too much time on their hands, remains to be seen.More Christmassy science? Try Leila's quantum explanation of Santa's travels. Or if you're bored of the festive season already, how about one of these crackers:
- Well, uh, yeah - Drop food on the floor and it gets dirty
- What? - Ridiculous phobias
- Silly - Coolium: the new element
- Madness - Students need to be tracked by GPS
Image: Irum Shahid
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