Why the New Math of Predicting Wrinkle Patterns Matters

A few scientists walk into a room and study a wrinkled piece of paper. It seems like a joke. In this case, though, it's a real story of a five year journey into trying to understand exactly how paper wrinkles and whether that pattern might be predictable instead of a "disordered ball of chaos."

Understanding the behavior of wrinkling (what scientists call "universal mathematical rules of elastic patterns") may seem like the ultimate example of science for its own sake. Yet if we could predict how these patterns happen, the applications could be quite significant. For one, this math could help to prevent certain building materials from being deformed over time. Another use case might be to make things that could be more easily folded and stored in unique ways. Or maybe other applications we haven't even thought about yet.