№ 001 · True Scale
The Paper Fold
Fold a piece of paper in half 42 times and it reaches the Moon. So how many folds to reach the Sun?
1 Your guess first
How many folds to reach the Sun? Pick one, then fold to find out.
2 Fold it
0.1 mm × 20 1 layer
Landmarks
3 The answer
Fold until you pass the Sun to see the answer.
How the maths works
Every fold doubles it
Fold a sheet once and you have 2 layers. Twice, 4. Three times, 8. After n folds you have 2n layers, and a sheet of office paper is about 0.1 mm thick, so:
thickness = 0.1 mm × 2n
Ten folds ≈ three more zeros
210 = 1,024, which is roughly 1,000. So every 10 folds multiplies the stack by about a thousand:
| Folds | Thickness |
|---|---|
| 10 | 10.2 cm |
| 20 | 104.9 m |
| 30 | 107 km |
| 40 | 109,951 km |
| 50 | 112.6 million km |
Why the Sun is only 9 folds past the Moon
The Sun is about 389 times further away than the Moon (149.6 million km vs 384,400 km). 9 more doublings multiply the stack by 29 = 512, which is more than enough. 42 folds reach the Moon, so 51 reach the Sun.
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