Crumpling paper

Triangular grids

I wanted to look into the relationship between the size of paper facets and the sound produced when they buckled. One method that seemed promising was to fold a sheet with a triangular grid and then weak crumple it on the cylinders. Folding a grid seemed to suppress the largest buckling events, but folding a smaller grid did not seem to supress large events more than a large grid; all three curves above veer away from a straight line, but the 2 inch, 1 inch and 0.5 inch curves don't do it in any particular order.

Combining this result with the fact that the crumpling noise seemed to change very little over time or with the size of a sheet, one tends to think that the sound produced by a facet when it buckles is at best weakly connected to it's size.

Photograph notes are availible.