Chaos Confetti is a reaction to the Chaos Orb story -- that's why the flavor text is "And you thought that was just an urban legend."

Note that Chaos Confetti, being from Unglued, was never tournament legal. However, Chaos Orb was for a time, being from the original Magic set.

Since Orb specifies a full rotation of the card during descent, how would the destructive play be ruled? I would imagine that there's some kind of group theory argument that if each individual piece of the card turns over, then the entire card has turned over, but it's not satisfying from a physics perspective. Do you have any rulings from the time?

Again, it's not clear that the confetti story actually happened at all, let alone in a tournament. (I mean, likely after it started spreading someone tried it in a non-tournament setting, but such a case wouldn't be the origin of the story.)

If someone did try it in a tournament, it probably wouldn't be legal -- why would it be? The text of the card certainly doesn't suggest it ought to be; that's part of why it's a notable story in the first place, that it turns on such an unusual interpretation. There are a number of rulings on how to play Chaos Orb from when it was tournament legal, but I can't find any relating to ripping it up; there's not a need to rule on what's clearly illegal. I don't think most people would be misled by a humorous story, an urban legend -- generally not told about a tournament setting -- into thinking that such a play would be legal in tournament.

A recent video on Rhystic Studies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dDLQkg5O1o) contains one person claiming that they witnessed someone trying this in a tournament -- presumably influenced by the story rather than the origin of it -- and the person who tried it was disqualified. Whether that actually happened, I don't know, but if so it even further suggests that no, there was no need to make detailed tournament rulings of this.

(Of course, the punchline of the Rhystic Studies account is that the person was disqualified not for the illegal play, but rather for the fact that, by doing so, they had reduced the number of cards in their deck to below the minimum legal size. If the Rhystic Studies story really did happen, though, I think we can infer that this reason was probably given because it was a way to avoid getting into an argument over whether ripping up the card was legal.)