A Problem!

For part of my Masters degree group project I needed a (not very) accurate map of a building to model a solution for mapping an interior space; I do not own a tape measure long enough for my whole house.

How is this to be done?

A Solution!

I did however, have a ball of twine. Sketching roughly, I made a 'blueprint' of the house.

The Idea

If I could get a piece of string long enough I could lay it out across the longest room of my house (the living room) and then fold it in half multiple times until it was a length I could measure.

Then with that length of the folded string I can find the length easily:

$$l_{\text{room}} = l_{\text{folded}} 2^n$$

Where \(n\) is the number of folds.

With that I could make this image:

Using inkscape I then plotted the blueprint and made a vector image:

I didn't really end up using this that much in the end but it was useful as a part of the research nonetheless, and a fun thing to do on a Saturday.