• f314@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    What on earth are you on about with those numbers? 😅

    A0 is the base size, with an area of one square meter. Fold that in half and you get A1. Fold that in half and you get A2, and so on. Regular printer paper is A4. You’ll rarely, if ever, see sizes smaller than A6.

    • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I fat-fingered the A5, otherwise the numbers were right?

      I’m aware how the system works, I just wrote about it using A4 as the “base”. A3 is what you fold to get A4, A2 folds to give A3, etc.

      I didn’t know A0 was exactly 1m2 though, TIL!

      • f314@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Want something that folds perfectly to A4? A3. One more fold? A2.

        This made it sound like you meant that folding an A3 sheet twice gives A2 😅 Might just be my reading comprehension, though!

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      16 hours ago

      I was hoping that there was a metric baseline for this paper size, but it still bugs me that the dimensions aren’t “even”. 297mm? That’s no better than 8 1/2 inches.

      • halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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        16 hours ago

        There is, but A4 isn’t the baseline, A0 is.

        A0 is 1m² with a ratio of 1:√2. Cut that in half along the larger side and you have A1, half it again and you have A2, etc. on down the line.

        The entire series maintains the same exact ratio down to A13 at 9mmx13mm.

        • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          So ridiculously dedicated to metric that they didn’t think to make A0 an exponent of 2, and then designed an entire system around dividing it by 2.

          A0 should’ve been 1.024 meters.

          • f314@lemmy.world
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            15 hours ago

            You’d still get «weird» lengths in the other dimension, though. Remember, the aspect ratio has to be 1 to the root of 2 for the folding in half to work.

            Also, I don’t think 1024 would have been such an obvious number back in the late 1700’s, when this system was first thought up 😅

            There is a system of sizes where the shortest side of the base size is exactly 1 meter, though: the B system. The aspect ratio is the same as for the A sizes.

      • f314@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        I see what you’re saying, but the «weird» dimensions are what makes the whole thing with folding in half to get the next size work:

        The aspect ratio has to be 1 to the root of 2 for it to work, and that’s going to make some dimensions «uneven». The utility of that system is worth it many times over!