How many times can you fold a piece of paper in half irrespective of its size and material?
2006-06-26 03:57:31 · 45 answers · asked by sophie 2 in Education & Reference ➔ Trivia
you can only fold it in half once. after that, you're folding it in quarters, eigths, etc
2006-06-26 04:00:19 · answer #1 · answered by vanilla_bean_dream 5 · 5⤊ 2⤋
No more than seven folds?
It's not possible to fold a piece of paper in half more than seven times, no matter how big or thin it is. Naturally no child takes this piece of knowledge on trust. They are usually convinced that somehow they will be able to prove the rest of the world wrong with a sheet torn roughly from an exercise book and a firm press or two of a ruler
As they will soon find, repeated doubling over of the paper means that, generally around the seventh fold, the paper becomes too thick to fold over any more.
Previous generations of children simply accepted this, much as they might accept that the Earth revolves around the sun. More recently, inquisitive minds have discovered that, using enormous sheets of thin paper, seven folds can be bettered.
Indeed, one precocious schoolkid, Britney Gallivan, studied the problem as a math project and found a way to fold paper 12 times. It involves some seriously complicated equations so we'll have to take her word for it.
FASCINATING FACT
If you were able to fold a piece of paper a hundredth of an inch thick in half 50 times, it would be so thick that it would reach from here to the Sun!
Source: http://books.aol.com/books-article-canvas/_a/be-the-coolest-dad-on-the-block/20060609121009990001
P.S. in regards to semantics -- by definition, every time you halve something, you halve it. So, folding in half the first time is halving. Folding that in half is halving, etc, etc, etc. So, forget the nonsense about it's quarters etc!!
2006-06-26 06:12:28 · answer #2 · answered by Bender 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
4
2006-06-26 04:53:29 · answer #3 · answered by jredfearn08 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Technically paper can be folded 7 times at a maximum, however if you had a piece of paper about the size of the UK then you can get an eighth fold in it. So the answer is 8.
2006-06-26 04:08:44 · answer #4 · answered by nkellingley@btinternet.com 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
6 times
2006-06-26 04:03:51 · answer #5 · answered by hot l 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If you really mean irrespective of size, then the answer is an infinitely large piece of paper cannot be folded at all since there are no edges to bring together.
2006-06-26 05:22:47 · answer #6 · answered by lunatic 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
6
2006-06-26 04:16:21 · answer #7 · answered by Danica O 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
7
2006-06-26 04:00:54 · answer #8 · answered by fricatease 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
7
2006-06-26 04:00:24 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
8
2006-06-26 04:39:03 · answer #10 · answered by doc 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
8
2006-06-26 04:03:27 · answer #11 · answered by >darkangel< 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋