Metric paper which always has the same ratio of dimensions when folded in half that being 1/sqrt(2). How was the logic behind this derived?
In: Mathematics
The reason for this is that you sometimes need to make the contents of a page larger or smaller.
Two A4 pages reduced to half their original size will exactly fit to a new A4 paper for example.
If you want to copy a double page spread of of an A4 magazine to a single A4 page it will fit exactly without any space wasted.
You can design stuff on a small scale and blow it up to a larger scale and keep the same aspect ratio.
Like designing an A1 poster as and A4 page. Or you can draw on a larger scale with more detail and reduce the result later.
This all is very useful and the ratio and size of an A4 is also close to what people were using anyway for writing letters.
An A0 paper is one square meter with the dimensions of 1 by sqrt(2)
Each subsequent paper size A1, A2, A3, A4, A5 etc is arrived at by cutting the bigger paper in two along its longer axis.
This gives you a paper that is half the size and has the ratio of 1 by sqrt(2) / 2 which works out to sqrt(2) by 1 again.
The actual size of each paper size are rounded to the next millimeter.
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