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A Closer Look At The Crease Length Problem, Sean F. Ellermeyer

Faculty and Research Publications

An optimization problem that appears as an exercise in most modern calculus textbooks is the crease length problem. Here, Ellermeyer provides a solution of the general crease length problem in which all possible foldings of a corner to the opposite edge are taken into account. One of his findings will be that the minimum crease length is never produced by a Case 2 fold and hence that the general crease length problem always yields a different minimum than the constrained problem that is treated in the textbooks. He discovers a criterion that determines which foldings must be performed in order …