School of Mathematics

School of Maths to be part of attempt to make the largest ever fractal!

In the week beginning 20th October, locations around the world will attempt to make the world's largest ever fractal. The School of Maths will be part of the MegaMenger project to build a Menger Sponge out of nearly 50,000 business cards, and the finished sculpture (about 1.5m cubed) will be displayed on Level 3 of the James Clerk Maxwell Building for all to admire.

We will be on Level 3 of JCMB from 10am-5pm Monday-Friday, and hope to see many people coming along to help with the project! You can drop by to pick up cards to build a small cube, or a pack to build up a bigger cube. Make them in the café, or take them away to build at home and bring back later - it's up to you! Anybody can take part.

A Level 1 Menger sponge consists of a 3x3 cube, with the centre cube deleted from each face and also from the very centre (see photo). So it is built from 20 small cubes. A Level 2 Menger sponge consists of 20 Level 1 sponges joined together in the same pattern as the small cubes that made the Level 1 sponge. And then a Level 3 sponge consists of 20 Level 2 sponges. There will be at least 20 locations around the world building Level 3 sponges, meaning that in theory they could be put together to make an epic Level 4 Menger sponge!

Each small cube is made of 6 business cards folded together, so 120 of these are assembled to make a Level 1 cube. You can do the maths to figure out how many we need for our final Level 3 build! The structure is entirely self supporting, held together only by the folds in the cards.

If you have any questions about this project, email Julia.Collins@ed.ac.uk. We hope to see you there!

More information about the project can be found on the MegaMenger website.

You can keep track of our progress too!