eli5 does folding a shirt one way over another method change its volume occupied in a suitcase

Question

eli5 does folding a shirt one way over another method change its volume occupied in a suitcase

In: 55

Answer 1

It’s more about the space that your shirts aren’t occupying.

Imagine you fill a jar with rocks, and you can fit say 20 rocks in the jar. Because rocks are weird shapes, there are little air pockets between them—places in the jar full of rock that contain no rocks.

Now imagine you take a hammer to the rocks and smash them into pebbles. If you put them back in the jar, they won’t reach the top anymore. Why? It’s still the same amount of rock, just in more tiny pieces? Well, the pebbles fit together better, so those little pockets of air are smaller.

You could take this even further and smash all the pebbles and grind them into sand. Now when you put the sand in the jar there’s even MORE SPACE between the top of the sand and the lip of the jar because the tiny sand grains fit together with less air space between them than the rocks or the pebbles had.

It’s the same idea with packing your suitcase. Some shapes fit together better and leave less empty space between them than other. Chucking all your clothes in a heap will have more empty space between items than if you neatly fold everything.