The problem with folding paper in half multiple times is that
the paper’s surface area decreases by half with each fold
. A single sheet of paper may be easy to cut, rip, or tear, but a paper that has been folded in half multiple times becomes very strong because of the increase in density.
Is it true that if you fold a piece of paper 42 times?
If you were to fold a piece of paper in half 42 times,
it would reach the moon
. Several of those around the table scoffed at this, exclaiming that a single sheet of paper was simply too thin to have its thickness reach any substantial amount after only a few dozen folds.
What happens to paper when you fold it?
“The first time you fold it in half,
it becomes 150 mm long and 0.1 mm thick
. The second fold takes it to 75 mm long and 0.2 mm thick. By the eighth fold (if you can get there), you have a blob of paper 1.25 mm long, but 12.8 mm thick. … 30 folds will get you to space, because your paper will be now 100 km high.
What happens if you fold a paper 100 times?
With just over 100 folds,
the thickness of the paper
would be equal to 93 billion light-years. The reason for this is exponential growth. … Folding the paper in half a third time will get you about the thickness of a nail. Seven folds will be about the thickness of a notebook of 128 pages.
Is it impossible to fold a paper 8 times?
Trying to fold an ordinary sheet of A4 paper suggests that
even eight times is impossible
: the number of layers doubles each time, and the paper rapidly gets too thick and too small to fold. Such ‘geometric growth’ effects are dramatic: in theory, 26 folds would make the paper thicker than the height of Mount Everest.
Why can’t we fold paper 7 times?
It’s commonly accepted that you cannot fold a single sheet of paper in half more than 7 times, no matter what paper finish, size, or basis weight you’re using, for two main reasons: Every time you fold your sheet,
you reduce your total surface area by half
, so eventually you simply run out of surface area to fold.
How many times do you have to fold a piece of paper to reach the moon?
And incredibly, it only takes
42 foldings
of a paper to get from the Earth to the Moon, and only about 94 foldings of a paper to make something the size of the entire visible Universe.
What if we fold a paper 103 times?
If you fold an A4 sheet of paper 103 times its thickness will roughly be
the size of the Universe
. … Turns out, according to Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, if you do this 103 times the sheet’s thickness will be larger than the observable Universe: 93 billion light-years.
How many times do you need to fold a piece of paper to reach the sun?
In fact, if you had a sheet of paper, and folded it in
half 50 times
, how thick would it be? The answer is about 100 million kilometres, which is about two thirds of the distance between the Sun and the Earth. And so Accepted Wisdom on Paper-Folding ruled, until 2001.
What is the most folded piece of paper?
On 27 January 2002, high school student, Britney Gallivan, of Pomona, California, USA, folded a single piece of paper in
half 12 times
and was the first person to fold a single piece paper in half 9, 10, 11, and 12 times. The tissue paper used was 4,000 ft (1,219 m; 0.75 miles) long.
How many times do you have to fold a paper to be the size of the universe?
Meanwhile, another researcher calculated the thickness the paper takes at each folding. The result: If you can somehow fold a paper in
half 103 times
, the thickness equals the diameter of the observable universe, that is, 93 billion light years.
How thick would a paper be if you fold it 50 times?
So if we fold a piece of paper 50 times, it would end up being
112,589,991 kilometres thick
!
How many times can you fold A4 paper in half?
It is commonly claimed that you cannot fold a piece of paper in half more than
seven times
. That may be true for a standard piece of paper of A4 dimensions, but according to US teenage (at the time) mathematician Britney Gallivan the maximum number of folds is in fact dependent on the initial size of the sheet.
Why does paper explode after 7 folds?
Then things start to get interesting. For the fifth and sixth folds, he brings in his hydraulic press to give the paper a little extra crease.
He attempts to do the same for the seventh
, at which point, the paper seems to explode, leaving a brittle mass where the once-flexible paper used to be.
Is it true that you can only fold paper 7 times?
Yes, absolutely
. A piece of paper can, in fact, be folded more than 7 times. It has been done many times in many places all around the world. It’s just that the people who accomplished the feat used a lot of paper!
How many times can you fold a dollar bill?
A bill can be folded forward and back
4,000 times
before it reaches the end of its lifespan.
