If you folded a newspaper 100 times how thick would it be?

Well, lets look at the mathematics. If you fold it once there are two layers, if you fold it twice you have four layers, if you fold it three times you have 8 layers, 4 folds gives 16 layers, 5 folds gives 32 layers, so on and so forth. This must follow some mathematical formula. It follows from powers of 2. If you fold it once you get 21=2 layers. If your fold it twice you get 22=4 folds. If you fold it three times you get 23=8 folds. Now following that same logic, if you fold a newspaper 100 times your get 2100 layers.

2100 folds = 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 = 1267 x 1 billion x 1 billion x 1 billion layers

Now if we assume that the thickness of one layer of newspaper is 0.0001 meters (that is 0.1 millimeters), we they need to multiply the thickness by the number of layers. Which is 126,765,060,022,822,940,149,670 kilometers thick. That is a huge number. To make it a bit more understandable lets put that is terms of different units, light years. A light year is the distance light travels in a year.

1 light year (ly) = 9,460,730,472,580 kilometers

So using these new units we find that the thickness of our newspaper that was folder 100 times is 13,399,077,417 light years thick. Which is about 13.4 billion light years thick!

It is currently thought that the diameter of the universe is about 90 billion light years. Meaning that if you started at one side of the universe and walked to the other side, 90 billion light years is the distance you would have walked. So if you folded 8 newspapers 100 times you be able to build a bridge from one side and the universe to the other side!

I love math!