

Tell HN: Guess how thick would a piece of paper be if it was folded 50 times - solipsist

When I heard the answer, it was completely mind-blowing. It makes logical sense if you sit down and think about it, but it is by no means intuitive.<p>I went around my school asking people how thick they thought it would be. Answers ranged from a few centimeters to a meter to a mile. One person was a lot more in the ball range after doing a quick calculation estimate in his head. However, it is still quite obvious that none of us can understand or truly comprehend exponential growth.<p>Anyways, after you've made a guess about what you think the answer is, find out the actual thickness here: http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-most-mind-blowing-facts/all_comments/Jeremy-Richardson
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hugh3
I just went and folded a piece of paper fifty times. It's about 5mm thick.

Oh, did you mean fold in _half_ fifty times so that its thickness becomes 2^50
* (thickness of one sheet)? Well, that's clearly physically impossible, so I
just concertina-ed it.

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solipsist
Tried adding the _in half_ part, but the title length exceeded the limit.

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tokenadult
Because of the unevenness of the folds, somewhat MORE than 2^50 times the
thickness of the paper, which gets to be an astounding thickness.

After edit: suggestion for a title rewrite: "Thickness of piece of paper after
50 folds in half?

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solipsist
Here's a summary of the answer: <http://textsave.de/?p=61802>

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pharno
its as long as the distance from earth to moon (afair)

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anigbrowl
10^11m, assuming 0.1mm thickness of a single sheet.

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profitbaron
"If you could fold a piece of paper in half 50 times, its thickness will be
3/4 the distance from the Earth to the Sun (71 million miles)" -
[http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-most-mind-
blowing-...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-most-mind-blowing-
facts/all_comments/Jeremy-Richardson)

