How-To Geek
How Folding Paper can get You to the Moon [Video]
Adrian Paenza presents a fun TEDEducation talk about exponential growth using the ‘folding of paper to reach the moon’ as his example. How many folds do you think it would take to reach the moon? You just might be surprised!
From YouTube: Can folding a piece of paper 45 times get you to the moon? By seeing what happens when folding just one piece of paper, we see the unbelievable potential of exponential growth. This lesson will leave you wanting to grab a piece of paper to see how many times you can fold it!
How Folding Paper Can Get You to the Moon – Adrian Paenza [via Geeks are Sexy]
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Comments (11)
Akemi Iwaya (Asian Angel) is our very own Firefox Fangirl who enjoys working with multiple browsers and loves 'old school' role-playing games. Visit her on Twitter and Google+.
- Published 01/15/13
If you could… the resulting “stack” would be of the microscopic ‘sheets’ of the dimensions 102.948994 x 133.22808 nano-meters. So the width and depths of the stack would be SMALLER than the paper’s original thickness (0.1mm). So the tiny sheets in the stack would have surpassed the possibility of being “folded” LONG before.
Most “bends” would have to be slices.
2^45 is a big number
My business understands exponential growth very well :).
What it also means is that the size of the original sheet of paper would have to span, quite possibly, an area larger than the surface of the Earth. No, I didn’t do the math, but considering it this way would compensate for the lack of surface area to fold into the volume of the resulting stack.
I wonder if Britney Gallivan has folded paper to the moon yet…
Of course, the troll side of this article is that it is impossible to fold paper more than 7 times!
@Carfyd:
I suggest you google “Britney Gallivan” – I know people USED to think that, but now you’re behind the times.
Carfyd is correct. It is not possible to fold a piece of paper more than 7 times.
Now – if you CUT it……………………………..
actually you can fold paper more than 7 times
#Origami
you’re thinking of folding it in half more than 7 times
which is still possible…
…if you have a big enough piece/sheet
they make those industrial rolls that are freaking huge
@Jack:
“I suggest you google “Britney Gallivan” – I know people USED to think that, but now you’re behind the times.”
MythBusters folded a sheet of paper 11 times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRAEBbotuIE