why is it hard/impossible to fold paper 7 times or more?
In: Physics
It’s often difficult to appreciate the speed of exponential growth (where the value regularly doubles, triples, etc.) as the values typically start small and get big very quickly. The “rice on a chessboard” story is another good example.
When you fold paper once the thickness doubles. Two folds and it’s 2^2 = 4 times thicker. After only 7 folds the paper is now 2^7 = 128 times its original thickness. In fact, it would only take around 42 folds to (theoretically) make your folded paper the same distance to the moon.
I think I’ve seen a video where people took a very large sheet of paper and eventually folded it about 9/10 times but they still ran into the same problem eventually.
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