You Cannot Do This. I Dare You.

I've seen this folding n 7 times on TV. I don't know why but it works. People have tried using huge sheets of paper, and itty bitty ones. My mind says this isn't true, but you can't physically do it. AHHHHHHH!
 
Every time you fold something you double it's height (actually a little more as you trap things between the two sides of the fold). So in a perfect world something that's been folded six times is 2 to the 6th power which is 64 times as thick it was by itself. It will actually be slightly thicker than that because of things trapped between the layers. At the same time the area of the thing you are folding is being reduced by 1/2 with each fold so after six folds the area is 1 over 2 to the 6th power which would be 1/64th of the area. So you are trying to fold an increasingly smaller thing which is sometimes impossible or close to impossible.
 
asp3 said:
Every time you fold something you double it's height (actually a little more as you trap things between the two sides of the fold). So in a perfect world something that's been folded six times is 2 to the 6th power which is 64 times as thick it was by itself. It will actually be slightly thicker than that because of things trapped between the layers. At the same time the area of the thing you are folding is being reduced by 1/2 with each fold so after six folds the area is 1 over 2 to the 6th power which would be 1/64th of the area. So you are trying to fold an increasingly smaller thing which is sometimes impossible or close to impossible.
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Or you could just try it.
 
fmdog44 said:
Or you could just try it.
Click to expand...

I've already done that. The time I was able to do it I used aluminum foil rather than paper and used a vice to flatten it as much as possible after each fold. I forget what I was finally able to do.

I just wanted to point out that the mathematics of why it is difficult to do.
 
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I always thought the challege included that it stayed folded. At the end of that clip if they let go it would ping open again for at least the last two foldings.
 

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