Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Crumpled paper balls don’t just look like brains—they act like ...

While working on his doctoral thesis at Harvard University over the last few years, Omer Gottesman spent a lot of time at his desk crumpling sheets of paper, especially when he was stuck. He would ...

A misguided but well-intentioned anti-bullying message has gone viral this past week. The "crumpled paper" exercise has been used by adults for many years to try to reduce bullying among kids. A ...

University physicists Thomas Witten and Sidney Nagel have been investigating where energy is stored in thin sheets of Mylar when work is performed on them by crumpling. They find the ability of a ...

If you've ever uncrumpled a crumpled piece of paper, you may have noticed the creases form in geometric patterns. But you probably didn't! It's a crumpled piece of paper! Well, next time, look closer.

A crumpled paper ball (left) has fractal properties. The sizes of holes and pores in the paper show self-similarity -- zooming into the bottom right quadrant of the paper (right), the image looks ...