How many paper folds would get you to the moon?
Folding a piece of paper makes it thicker. How many folds would it take to reach the moon—and beyond?
The thickness of a standard sheet of paper is about 0.1 millimeter. Each time you fold the paper in half, its thickness doubles. So, to reach the moon's distance of 384,000 kilometers, you would need to fold the paper 42 times. This is due to exponential growth, where the thickness increases by a factor of 2 with each fold. While folding 42 times is physically challenging, it is still possible with a sufficiently long and thin piece of paper.
Beyond the moon, the thickness continues to grow exponentially, eventually exceeding the distance to the sun after 51 folds and even surpassing the observable universe after 93 folds.
Written by urgent.news from Scientific American's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
