If you folded a newspaper 100 times, how thick would it be?

Question

Using the process of exponentiation.

lol thanks for all your responses. I was just taken back after watching a debate with author/philosopher Sam Harris. He said, ""to fold a piece of paper 100 times is to essentially multiply its thickness by 2 rays to the power of a hundred".

Answer 1

x to the 100th

Answer 2

The author is right. If you fold a sheet you are basically doubling the thickness. So if you fold the sheet thrice you have increased the thickness by 2*2*2 that is 2 to power 3 times. Same way if you fold it 100 times you are increasing the thickness by 2 to the power 100 times.

Answer 3

let t be the thickness of the paper:
Then folding doubles the previous value:
After one fold: we get 2t
After two folds: 2^(2)t
...
After 100 folds: 2^(100)t
- regardless of what t is (provided its realistic)... this number is quite substantial!!!

BY THE WAY: For those of you claiming that you can't fold a paper more than 8 times you are dead wrong - why not try reading on current affairs I believe we are currently up to 12 or 13 - set by a young female high school student (at the time) she even wrote a paper on her mathematics used (Do not quote me here I heard this via word of mouth - someone did achieve this but I have a hard time remembering exact details).
Granted this number does hold for regular sized paper but the question did not restrict the size of the newspaper so please do not assume.
Also, to those that claim the answer is t^100 - Consider if the thickness is 0.1 units. Then t^100 < 0.1!!! So when you fold it you're getting something smaller - Which is ABSURD!!! So no the answer is not t^100.

Answer 4

I'll assume that you mean folding in such a way to double the thickness and halve the area. In this case, the thickness would increase by a factor of 2^100 which is roughly 10^30 (10^3 ≈ 2^10). Newsprint is typically about 70 microns thick (1 micron = 10^-6 m). 70 * 10^-6m * 10^30 = 7 * 10^25 m. This is about 7.5 billion light years. Needless to to say, it's impossible to fold a newspaper thusly.

UPDATE: 2^100 ≈ 10^30 * 1.27
9.5 billion light years.

Answer 5

That depends. First of all, I am going to assume you mean a single sheet of newspaper.

If you mean 'fold it in half 100 times' then I would say, that is not possible as no piece of paper can be folded in half more than 8 or 9 times.

If you just mean random folding, then I am pretty sure i could make 100 folds in a piece of newspaper and still not make it any thicker than twice or three times the thickness in any one place.

If you mean purely in mathematical terms, then I guess you would have to measure the thickness of a sheet of newspaper times 2 to the 100th power.

Answer 6

Literally, it's impossible to fold a piece of paper anywhere near 100 times! (Try it.) If you simply mean how thick would 100 sheets of newsprint be, this non-mathematician would simply take a stack thick enough to measure, count the sheets in it, add however many it took to make a factor of 100, measure again, and extrapolate.

But 100 folds would not equal 100 sheets. My mathematician husband says to take the thickness of one sheet and multiply it by 2 to the 100th power. So how do you measure the thickness fo one sheet of newsprint? Go back to my first idea: measure a stack, count the sheets in it, and divide the thickness by the number.

Answer 7

It is not so easy to continue folding a paper an infinite number of times. It gets rather difficult at about 8 folds!

Your proposed 100 foldings would be equivalent to the thickness of 2 raised to the 100th power, sheets of newsprint.
Quite a pile!

Answer 8

Eight is the limit, but I can only get to seven.
If you folded it in the same place 100 times it would be the same thickness you started with only it would double every time you folded it. Like fold it and unfold it then fold it and unfold it. That is the only way you could fold it 100 times.

Answer 9

You can't fold a newspaper 100 times. I think the most you can fold a piece of paper is 8 times, before the crease is too strong to fold again.

Answer 10

Can't be done... depending on the thickness of the paper, you can only fold a sheet of paper 7 - 12 times times. See proof below.

Answer 11

Ok, I think what these people are forgetting to say is that you can't fold it 7 to 8 times IN HALF. But the whole random folding thing, shoot, I'm sure you could, but I have no idea how thick it would be :p