How can folding a paper 42 times reach the moon?
In: Physics
A piece of paper is notionally 0.004 inches thick. The moon is 238,000 miles away. That’s nearly four quadrillion sheets of paper stacked up to reach the moon. Surely just 42 folds isn’t that thick? But wait. Every time you fold a piece of paper, you double its thickness. So multiply two times two times two and so on forty-two times, or by exponent notation 2^42 . Turns out that really is a huge number, more than enough thicknesses to make it to the moon.
Another popular demonstration of the power of doubling: start with a penny. Double it every day. In a month you will be a millionaire. If you kept doubling it for 42 days you would own the whole world, I think, though I haven’t done the math. I leave it as an exercise for the student.
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