***WALL O' TEXT WARNING ***
If you don't like reading long posts that involve 8½x11 paper and some math, do NOT read.
I was talking with some friends, and one of them brought up an interesting theory, that is, the thickness of an 8½ by 11 piece of paper folded in half 50 times would reach the sun. I found this hard to believe, of course, so I did some math to prove it.
The basic idea is that the thickness of the paper doubles every time you fold it. Let's say I folded a piece of copy paper (0.1 mm thick) 10 times. That would be
0.1*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2 mm
or
0.1(2^10)
or
about 10.24 cm thick.
It follows that the basic equation is
thickness(2^number of folds).
Now we'll apply this to a piece of paper folded 50 times.
0.1(2^50)
Which turns out to be
about 69,960,176.7 miles thick.
That's not quite the distance to the sun, which is about 91.3 million miles. Disappointing, right?
Wrong.
Let's calculate this out using the thickness of 10 pt cardstock (0.25 mm).
0.25(2^50)
174,900,442 miles.
That's almost twice the distance to the sun.
Feel free to calculate this out yourself, it's astounding.
Adv Reply
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Originally Posted by sh228
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