Paper Ball and Bean Bag Dimensions

Answers

9. For the paper balls, the slope of the line, and therefore the dimension, should be between 2 and 3. This value depends on the stiffness of the paper and whether it was reprocessed (crumpled, flattened, and recrumpled). In all cases, crumpling paper produces a wide range of sizes of cavities within the paper ball. This range of sizes lowers the paper ball dimension below 3.

On the other hand, the bean bags are composed of uniform size beans which tightly pack, leaving spaces of about the same size. Because the bean bags do not have a range of sizes of spaces, within experimental error the bean bags should have dimension 3.

(Uniform size spaces do not affect dimension, but they do decrease the average density. Do you see why the average density of a bean bag is lower than the average density of a bean?)

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