Can you fold paper 13 times?
Sarah Martinez
Updated on April 02, 2026
Courtesy of St. Mark’s School. Using 54,000 feet of toilet paper and the 825-foot long “Infinite Corridor” at MIT as a workspace, students from a small boarding school in Massachusetts say they broke an unofficial record for folding paper on Sunday. …
How thick is a piece of paper folded 10 times?
10 folds and the paper will be about the width of a hand. 23 folds will get you to one kilometer—3,280 feet. 30 folds will get you to space. Your paper will be now 100 kilometers high.
How tall would a paper folded 20 times be?
which
With each fold, more and more energy needs to be inputted. A paper folded in half 10 times will result in thickness roughly the width of your hand, but if it’s folded 20 times will be 10 km high, which makes it higher than Mount Everest.
What if we fold a paper 42 times?
Given a paper large enough—and enough energy—you can fold it as many times as you want . Problem: If you fold it 103 times (only if you could ) , the thickness of your paper will be larger than the observable Universe: 93 billion light-years. Yes,on folding the paper 42 times ,it would reach the moon.
What is the world record for most folds in paper?
12 times
The current world paper-folding record belongs to California high school student Britney Gallivan, who in 2002 managed to fold a 1.2km-long piece of tissue paper 12 times.
Can a paper be folded 7 times?
As you can see, paper can be folded more than seven times. You just need to use bigger and bigger pieces of paper to increase the number of folds possible. It can be fun to play with the mathematics of paper folding to see how thickness increases exponentially with each fold.
Why can’t we fold paper 7 times?
The commonly accepted wisdom is that you can’t fold a single sheet of paper in half more than seven times. The problem with folding paper in half multiple times is that the paper’s surface area decreases by half with each fold. With the assistance of a forklift and steamroller, they get the paper to fold 11 times.
Is it possible to fold a paper 7 times?
Yes, absolutely. A piece of paper can, in fact, be folded more than 7 times. It has been done many times in many places all around the world. It’s just that the people who accomplished the feat used a lot of paper!
What happens if u fold a paper 42 times?
If you were to fold a piece of paper in half 42 times, it would reach the moon. Several of those around the table scoffed at this, exclaiming that a single sheet of paper was simply too thin to have its thickness reach any substantial amount after only a few dozen folds.
How many times can you fold a sheet of paper?
There is no limit to the amount of times one can fold a piece of paper in half if the paper is large enough. However, because the thickness of the paper grows exponentially, a lot of paper would be needed to make more than 8 folds.[1][2][3]
What is the world record for folding paper?
Within MIT’s Infinite Corridor , a group of 15 St. Mark’s School students and teacher James Tanton claim to have set the world record for folding paper by folding 13,000 feet of toilet paper 13 times, breaking the previous world record of 12 folds.
How do you fold a piece of paper?
Steps Use a letter-size piece of paper. Fold the paper hot-dog style, along the vertical axis. Fold the paper hot-dog style a second time. Fold the ends into triangles by folding them over diagonally. Fold each triangle over diagonally again, forming a thin parallelogram on each end.