if you folded a piece of paper in half 100 times how thick would it be?

Question

OK. Just supposing you could get a big enough piece of paper that you could fold in half 100 times. Call it a theoretical case if you like. How thick??

Answer 1

Assuming that it is possible:

Thickness = 2^100 * thickness of 1 sheet
≈1.27 X 10^30 * thickness of 1 sheet

If thickness of sheet = 0.2 mm
Thickness = 2.54 X 10^29 mm (= 10^28 inches)
= 2.54 x 10^23 km (≈ 1.58 x 10^23 miles)(which is an awefully long way!!!!

(1 light year ≈ 9.47 x 10^15 km so this distance is 2.68 x 10^7 light years)

Answer 2

Hey, guys, the question wasn't "CAN you fold a piece of paper in half 100 times?..."

Each folding doubles the thickness, so if the thickness of the paper is x, then you final thickness would be

x * 2^100 (not x * 2^99)

If anyone wants to multiple it out, have fun. But you can estimate it by noting that each 10 powers of 2 adds about 3 digits (slightly over, actually, in multiples of 1024), so the final multiplier for x would be about 1 followed by 30 zeroes. If the paper was 0.1 mm thick (thin stuff, ~250 sheets per inch), remove 7 of those zeroes to get the answer in kilometers, in other words, about 10^23 kilometers.

Still too unimaginable a number? Divide it by 9.5 * 10^12 and you get about 10^10, or 100 billion light-years, about one power of 10 larger than the observable universe.

REPEAT: ABOUT 100 BILLION LIGHT-YEARS THICK

YES, ABOUT 100 BILLION LIGHT-YEARS THICK

Answer 3

Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.

Through the Looking Glass by L. Carroll


In fact the amount of times you can fold a piece of paper is proportional to its size and thickness, ie a thin oiece of paper can be folded more times than a thick piece.

the exact equation has been published and proved it is

L="pie".t/6.(2n+4)(2n-1)

where L is the minimum possible length of the material, t is material thickness, and n is the number of folds possible in one direction.
L and t need to be expressed using the same units.

However there are different ways to fold the paper in half, so you could also say,

W="pie" T 2 to the power of 3(n-1)/2

This equation gives the width "W" of a square piece of paper needed to fold a piece of paper "n" times, by folding in alternate directions. The actual equation for alternate folding is more complicated, but this relatively simple formula gives a bound that can not be exceeded and is quite close to the actual limit.

For paper that is not square, the above equation still gives an accurate limit. If the paper is 2:1 in length to width ratio, imagine it folded one time making it twice as thick "t" and then use the above formula remembering that one extra fold is added.

Answer 4

I don't know about 100 times but if you can fold a piece of paper 64 times the thickness would be 17 million miles

Answer 5

I think you would have to have a giant sized piece of paper to fold it that many times, and if you could fold it 100 times the thickness would depend on how thick the paper was to begin with. Weird question!

Answer 6

Every time you folded it, it would get twice as thick. So, after 100 folds, it will be 2^100 times as thick which is about: 2^100*(0.003 in) = 3.8029518x10^27 inches = 6.00213352x10^22 miles = 6.45696973x10^14 astronomical units = 1.02103151x10^10 lightyears = 3.13042726x10^9 parsecs = 100,000 times the width of the Milky Way Which is somewhere between 20% and 100% of the diameter of the known universe. This is clearly not practical, and impossible to do on earth.

Answer 7

You can fold the paper a lot more times than most people think, nobody says the folds have to be at right angles, just get a long , long piece of paper and keep doubling it, I suppose theoretically you could have a thirty mile long piece of paper. Or more.

Answer 8

Original thickness of the paper x 2^100 ~ theoretically.
Practically - you can't fold any paper 100 times - its just not possible

Answer 9

To all those people who have ignorantly said you cannot fold a paper more than seven (or eight) times 'It's impossible'; you'll obviously be interested to know that the current world record is TWELVE folds by schoolgirl Britney Gallivan.

She also set the records for folding paper 9, 10 and 11 times on the same day. Clearly too many people thought eight was the best and gave up. Now they'll have egg on their faces.


Edit: Posted after G!'s answer. Has my answer fallen on deaf ears? 'It's been scientifically proven...'. I think Britney and here limit equations would beg to differ. Oh and it actually been done, not just proved mathematically. She did actually fold a piece of paper using single-directional folding TWELVE times. This eight times business is rubbish. Forget it now!

Answer 10

well u actually can fold it a 100 times u just need a very very very big peice of paper and the how thick it is u multiply it by two evry time u fold it so say ur paper is 1/2 in then u fold it and get 1 in then u fold it again 2 inches and so on so forth

Answer 11

It's impossible to fold a piece of paper in half 100 times.