Watch a hydraulic press attempt to fold a sheet of paper more than 7 times

You may have heard of the old myth that it is impossible to fold a single sheet of paper in half more than seven times.  The reason being that with each fold it requires double the amount of energy to fold again, or what is known as an exponential increase.

The Hydraulic Press YouTube channel decided to put this myth to the test.  In their test in the video below, they use a single, thin sheet of paper and a hydraulic press to fold it.

 

 

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki explains why this feat is so difficult, stating, "The first time you fold it in half, it becomes 150 mm long and 0.1 mm thick. The second fold takes it to 75 mm long and 0.2 mm thick. By the eighth fold (if you can get there), you have a blob of paper 1.25 mm long, but 12.8 mm thick. It's now thicker than it is long, and, if you're trying to bend it, seems to have the structural integrity of steel."

So a sheet of paper continuously folded is going to get very tall, very fast. Gizmodo has laid down just how tall it could get:

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A piece of paper folded in half 20 times will be 10 km high, which makes it higher than Mount Everest.

30 folds will get you to space, because your paper will be now 100 km high.

42 folds will get you to the Moon. 

81 folds and your paper will be 127,786 light-years, almost as thick as the Andromeda Galaxy.

At 103 folds, you will get outside of the observable Universe, which is estimated at 93 billion light-years in diameter.

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Numbers are fun, aren't they?