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How Many Times Can You Fold a Piece of Paper in Half?

For many years the Paper Folding Problem (how many times can any given size piece of paper be folded exactly in half) has thought the physical limit was 8 folds.

paper folding formulaJason from The Horrors of an Easily Distracted Mind reminds us that a young lady from Pomona, CA, Britney Gallivan, has solved the Paper Folding Problem mathematically. And she figured it out when she was only a Junior in high school.

Britney, in a single day, solved the problem and then broke the record by folding a piece of gold foil twelve times.

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I admit it: I’m a big numbers geek — math, stats, algorithms, etc. — you name it, I like numbers. Apparantly Jason does to, as I just realized that I also first learned about the Doomsday Algorithm from Jason’s blog.

Posted by Robbie Cooper on Saturday, November 26th, 2005 | Trackback |

2 Responses to “How Many Times Can You Fold a Piece of Paper in Half?”

I’m not really that into numbers and such, but I like the formulas somehow. Especially when they’re useful or when they break rules I learned ages ago.

Left by Jason on November 27th, 2005 at 6:17 pm

I was told that much paper folding was impossible long ago. This Britney did not only broke the record but did many more folds of paper than anyone else. I call that a brilliant breakthrough. Some people manage to barely break a record, but to go dimension beyond takes a knack.

You know some people are saying if they can just do 13 folds. Let them shatter the record by doing 16 folds. Neat the formula tell how many time a paper of any size can be folded. The math actually works out for two cases I tried.

Left by Jay on December 18th, 2006 at 1:09 am

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