Math
Explainer
Folding paper to the Moon
Fold paper 42 times and it would reach the Moon
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Lesson notes
Key points
- Each fold doubles the thickness, so growth multiplies instead of adding.
- After ten folds, a sheet is about a thousand layers thick.
- Keep doubling and a tenth of a millimetre passes 384,000 kilometres by fold 42.
Takeaway: Doubling gets huge faster than intuition expects
Quick check: What happens with each fold?
- Thickness doubles
- Adds 1 mm
- Stays the same
Doubling1,024 layersExponential
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