Take a full-size bedsheet, scissors, staples and a legend from long ago, and suddenly geometry in the middle of summer isn't so bad.

It may even be -- gasp -- fun?

Crazy as it sounds, that's exactly what students in Dave Ferris' class at Noblesville High School are saying about a project that was first a success for the legendary Princess Dido. Ferris got the idea from a math workbook that explained Virgil's story.

The princess, according to Virgil's Aeneid, like so many characters in mythology, had death brought to her doorstep when her brother killed her husband.

A plot for daytime drama, for sure.

Unlike today's soap stars, Dido picked herself up by her sandal straps and traveled to a new city, where she attempted to buy land in order to start a new life.

Outsiders, however, weren't welcome, it seems. Dido was told she and her staff could buy any land they could enclose in an ox skin.

Well, Dido wasn't born in the first century.

She and her workers sliced the ox skin into thin strips, tied them together, and as the legend had it, encircled the entire city and laid claim to all within it.

Ferris' students had no intention of taking over the high school.

But by taking an ordinary bed sheet and cutting it into 1-inch wide strips, the kids were able to stake out roughly an acre of land, in each of four groups that attempted the project.

"As soon as we got up and started cutting and stapling, the interest level just skyrocketed," Ferris said.

The major mathematical lesson the students were taught is something called the isoperimetric principle. In English, Ferris said, it means that the best way to enclose an area is with a circle.

"It's funner than what we've been doing this summer," offered Corey DeMoss, 16. "It makes a lot more sense (seeing it) than what I thought."

More sense, but not less work.

"It is a lot of work," admitted Mayra Gomez, 15, as she busily tried to untangle herself from yards and yards of blue bedsheet. "But it's way much better than (a worksheet)."

Ferris said the summer class was his test for the project.

"It's the first time I've ever done it," he said. "But because it is summer, I thought it was conducive to try this."

The students not only will study the geometrical properties of the experiment, but also write a paper when they're finished, detailing their experiences.

One of those lessons is likely to be organization.

Holly Chaudion, 17, was part of a team that had extraordinary trouble with their sheet tangling.

The fabric seemed to draw itself tighter and tighter together, despite the group's puzzle-solving efforts.

But that's part of the experience, too, Ferris said.

"Sometimes you learn more from your mistakes."