Britney Gallivan Britney Gallivan Britney Crystal Gallivan (born 1985) of Pomona, California, is best known for determining the maximum number of times that paper or other materials can be folded in half. In January 2002, while a junior in high school, Gallivan demonstrated that a single piece of toilet paper 4000 ft (1200 m) in length can be folded in half twelve times. This was contrary to the popular conception that the maximum number of times any piece of paper could be folded in half was seven. She calculated that, instead of folding in half every other direction, the least volume of
Mathematics of paper folding to form developable surfaces that are not flat. Wet-folding origami allows an even greater range of shapes. The maximum number of times an incompressible material can be folded has been derived. With each fold a certain amount of paper is lost to potential folding. The loss function for folding paper in half in a single direction was given to be formula_4, where "L" is the minimum length of the paper (or other material), "t" is the material's thickness, and "n" is the number of folds possible. The distances "L" and "t" must be expressed in the same units, such as