3 ms·
Tell HN: Guess how thick would a piece of paper be if it was folded 50 times
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.
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.
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
- pharno 15y agoits as long as the distance from earth to moon (afair)
- hugh3 15y agoI 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.
- solipsist 15y agoTried adding the in half part, but the title length exceeded the limit.
- tokenadult 15y agoBecause 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?
- solipsist 15y agoHere's a summary of the answer: http://textsave.de/?p=61802 http://textsave.de/?p=61802
- anigbrowl 15y ago10^11m, assuming 0.1mm thickness of a single sheet.
- profitbaron 15y ago"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-facts/all_comments/Jeremy-Richardson http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-most-mind-blowing-...