Exponential growth: How folding paper can get you to the Moon 

Teacher: how long is the distance between Earth and Moon..? Me: 45 folds..

i knew origami would get me somewhere one day

*Hey, Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!*

If I write "I love you" in a paper and fold it 45 times, twice, would it be like saying "I love you to the moon and back?" 👁️👄👁️

Nasa : To the moon? That`ll cost 25 billion dollars. Adrian Paenza: No just fold paper 45x.

I like it how they added instructions on how to get back. We wouldn't want anyone getting stuck on the moon, would we?

I love how his animation kept the area constant while increasing height only

3:34 Thanks dude I thought I would be stuck after reaching Moon

NASA: We'll have Humans at mars in the next 10 years Paper: Hold my beer...

1:04 "...what would you imagine the thickness of the paper would be then?" Me: "乇乂ㄒ尺卂 ㄒ卄丨匚匚"

*Darn, Elon should see this. He would probably close down spacex and open a book store*

"What would you imagine the thickness of the paper would be then?" me: idk probably like 10 cm also me after I've seen the 25th fold: BOI

"Mom" "Yes" "Get the Bible" "Why" *"WE'RE GOING TO HEAVEN"* *_"WHAT"_*

I got 56 Bibles 72 dictionarys 45 Harry Potter books See y'all later I'm going to Mars!

I remember reading somewhere years ago - and it seemed as incredible as this one - that if you could fold a piece of paper 100 times it would actually be taller than the KNOWN UNIVERSE is wide. That is, it would be about 16.7 *BILLION* _lightyears_ tall. Doesn't seem feasible until you start actually doing the math. Another one similar to this is the one where you hire someone to work for you for 30 days, but you're going to pay them every day double what you gave them the day before, but you will start with only 1 penny. So, on day two you will give them 2 pennies (so now they have 3 pennies, etc). How much would they have at the end of the 30 days? Almost 11 million dollars!

By the way, here is something called dimension compression. You start with a rectangle with dimensions 1x2. It has an area of 2 square units. However, if we were to move the line on top of the rectangle to the midpoint, the bottom line will double in length, assuming the area of the rectangle remains constant. Then, it will have dimensions of 0.5x4. If we keep dragging the top line as the space becomes infinitesimally small as the 2 lines converge on top of each other, we will get a line that extends infinitely; a dimension. We can do the same thing with a 3D cube, where we will compress the top square to the bottom one which increases it to extrude it into a flat 2D plane. Therefore, we can theorize we are living in a 4D tesseract where the top cube is compressing against the bottom cube, causing the universe to expand at negative velocities. When the top cube lies on top of the bottom cube, the Big Rip will happen as the bottom cube gets an infinite 3D volume. Therefore, if you want to extrude something into the 4th dimension, you must make them infinitely large in 3 dimensions, and then pull the top cube out of the bottom cube, which will shrink the tesseract back to finite dimensions. Therefore, if we divide by 0, we can create an infinitely large Rubik's cube and pull the cubes away to create the first 3x3x3x3 Rubik's tesseract.

0 folds. I can't bring myself to ruin such fine paper.

"Mom, get the bible we're going to the moon!"

These are the thoughts I get when I am bored and couldn't sleep at night

Ok, but why do i feel like swallowing my saliva just from hearing this guy talking?

Somebody: "Love you to the moon and back" Me: *YoU mEaN...*

Damn that paper *THICC*

Hmm so I can go to the moon right now? Reality: let me introduce myself

This is very theoretical! It’s scientifically impossible, you would also need to start with a huge paper, it has to be super flexible, more flexible than silk

I took a sheet of computer paper and stared at it for a while before going like, "Nope, this can NOT be as tall as the Empire State Building." Then I folded it 40 times The purpose of this comment is that I need help. If you see this comment, please tell NASA that I'm stuck on one of their satellites.

And so I grabbed a piece of paper and started folding it and after 5 folds the paper was torn. Moral :- Never take Science so lightly even if it seems easy.

I'd like to see the same animation done with the size of the sheet of paper, assuming when you get to the moon, you have a stack that measures 8-1/2" x 11" x 250,000,000 miles. How big of a sheet do you need to start with?

Ted Ed: *lessons worth sharing* Me: brain dead after this 4 minute vid

NASA: ...Nope, we cant afford a rocket to space. Me: *folds paper 45 times* NASA: *ITS A MOON LADDER*

1919: soon in the future we will have flying cars. 2019: nope but have papers though.

Maybe if the paper was a million miles wide, we could get a visible folded bridge to the moon out of it.

i first thought this was fake, but now that im learning about exponential growth and decay in khan academy, i think it is posible if you have the right sized paper

So let's say we take an average newspaper, 4800cm^2. When this is folded in half the area halves and becomes 2400cm^2. As you continue to fold the paper in half, the area keeps shrinking resulting in 45 folds making a piece of paper of size 0.0000000001cm^2, which is 140 times smaller than a carbon atom (which is inside a molecule of paper), therefore if folding paper more than 7 times was possible, 45 times would result in an atom being split meaning you couldn't get it to the moon.

When you fold a 1meter length paper 40 times, the length/width would be reduced to 9e-13m. I believe this is smaller then the size of an atom. The paper tower would be so thin it couldn't hold together at the sub atomic level. So even as a hypothetical discussion, the concept doesn't hold water very well.

0:45 amogus

I just watched your video and I really enjoyed it! Your video was well-made, informative, and entertaining. I especially liked the way you explained the topic in a clear and concise way. I also appreciate the way you included relevant details in your video. Overall, I thought your video was excellent! I would definitely recommend it to others who are interested in learning more about the topic. Thanks for creating such a great video! Sincerely. PS: I outsourced this feedback to AI

Finally found a way to reach the moon back in just 50 cents, Now that's called saving

By folding it 45 times, we get to the moon, and by doubling it.... *me thinking* mars? We get back to earth *brain.exe has stopped working*

A good demonstration for students of the power of exponential growth.

I am sure. In the future there will be 'folds' as unit of distance

Dad: what are you doing? Kid: my science project

Let's face it, we all know folding paper won't get us to the moon.

To continue with this mathematical phenomenon, let's come up with an equation for this paper-folding technique. If we think of this as x = t * 2^n, with x being the length of the folded paper, t being the original thickness, and n being the number of times we fold the paper, we can find how large n would be at a certain thickness if we know how thick the paper originally was. According to the video, the thickness of this magical paper is 0.001 cm, or 0.00001 m, or 10^-5 m, so we can use this starting thickness again for this example. Finally, let's come up with a distance we can reach. Since they already used the distance between the earth and moon as an example, let's come up with something bigger, like the distance to the sun. That distance is 150 million km or 1.5 * 10^11 meters. Plugging it in, we get 1.5 * 10^11 = 10^-5 * 2^n, which must mean that 2^n is 1.5 * 10^16. We can find n by transforming the exponent into a log, and so we get the log function log2(1.5 * 10^16), which is equal to 53.736. Since we can't fold the fraction of a distance, we can round it up to get 54 folds. Let's go even further: Distance to Proxima Centauri (4 * 10^16 meters) = 71.760 (72) folds Length of Milky Way Galaxy (1.75 * 10^21 meters) = 87.177 (87) folds Diameter of Observable Universe (8.8 * 10^26 meters) = 106.117 (106) folds

love this guy.

120 folds and u go to edge of the universe

Narrator at 2:00 Me: yeah, only if we could do that

shouldn’t they say “cut” in half instead of “fold”?

I fold toilet paper all the time like that lol. Guess where it goes, that's right Uranus.

Why are you using miles for? You started off good in one unit, and fucked up.

You should explain about the setbacks. The paper being folded increases in height, but reduces in length. Which means there's a limited height it can reach.

Sure, let's start with the metric system and when numbers get bigger, switch to miles (why!?)...

I can only get to 44 folds

Yeah you can go infinitely high, but its length and witdh DECREASE exponentially with each fold. Interesting video though.

Good representation, very relevant to covid. Is there an agnostic/metric version coming out soon for the modern world?

Is this how we are going to get beyond Lightspeed, folding spacetime? :D

If you start the month with $1 and double it every day, you'd be a billionaire by the end of that month.

"Someone is getting to the top of the empire state building with a paper" Wind: "I'm about to end this man's whole career. "

This is something people don't seem to understand, especially in these harsh coronavirus times

This may be the reason Jeff bezoz started from an online book store and now trying to reach the moon

Have you ever tried to fold a piece of paper more than 8 times. It's impossible.

fun fact: 25 folds and its height would be 0.25 miles it's width would be 0.0000002 ft this is called exponential decay 45 folds and it's width would be 0.000 000 000 000 28 width (diameter) of an atom's nucleuss 1x10^12 which is close to width of 45 folds 45 folds and we get ladders to the moon that are 3 nucleuses wide hold my beer

Well why do we need NASA if we have billions of paper produced everyday

His voice is just so relaxing 😌

Instructions not clear, stuck in orion's belt

Well... Its length will be enough to go to the Moon (in 45 folds). But how am I going to climb it? I need a solution NOW. I have to go to the Moon this weekend for my school project.

It's a unit impulse function also called delta dirac function defined as f(t)=1÷e when e (the width of paper tends to 0 the function tend to infinity)

Guy: I have spent my carrier on papers. Wind, Gravity and Pressure: My Carrier is on the carrier of your papers.

guys I went to mars by folding paper. but I didn't count how many folds.

How much folds would it take to get to her heart? :'(

at the end when he said fold it one more time and we could come back to earth i lost it

Me: “Mom I learned something new today! Mom: What is it? Me: I can get to the moon Mom: Its not that easy how are you going to do that? Me: *Holds bible*

The area of paper is also exponentially decreacing...so assume that initial area is 1m^2 that is length is 1m and breath is 1m after folding 49 times ...(by doing mathematical calculation)...the length and breath become 42(nano meter)....so, it becomes invisible to human eyes...thickness is less then 3000 time to human hair...

The problem with this is that you can’t do this even if you had an exponentially large piece of thin paper since eventually the folding of the paper literally causes the outer layers to be ripped in half since they are on the outer layers abs can’t stretch that far over each fold. Think of how each fold adds extra distance to in the form of the increasing curve

This is so counterintuitive that I, after seeing this and completely understanding it, still think it might very well be nothing more than a weird joke.

if u fold it 45 times u get a rly long piece of paper

What am I suppose to do with this information

"How to reach more than 320 block limit in minecraft" Google: "You can't" Bing:

did this yesterday, very cool

all shitheads trying to say "its physically impossible " or this "video is misleading",this is trying to teach the concept of exponential growth , its an analogy which is perfect to me.peace.

I've started to wonder why they built rockets !!

how do you know where to put the decimal in the number you get after you raise 2 to a certain power

Awesome teaching

me: *mouth open,,,hands on my forehead,,,AMAZED* Dad: what are you watching? me: I have no idea...

Came to comments to see if people would say "this is bullshit I can do it 25 times"

Imagine how big the paper needs to be to be folded that much

for anybody looking for the answer, its 45.

First, I googled how many 250000 miles in kilometers.

As a canadian, Y U MURICANS NO SWITCH TO METRIC

Me - folding paper Dad- what are u doing Me -planing to go to moon

What a great idea for my son this weekend. It’ll be hours before he finishes.

What they forgot is that every time you fold a piece of paper in half it gets smaller while it gets thicker, the surface area of the paper doesn't change no matter how many times you fold it

Summary of most of the comments here: "I know it's mathematically correct, but it's not possible!" REALLY? It's just an idea that works in theory, just like ironman can invent a new element in 5 minutes for a movieplot or how dogs playing poker can work for a painting. Some people just don't understand the "if" in this video. Well at least we don't all suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect...

Everybody gansta till a giant folded paper hits on the head

Where do you get Such a large paper from?

Wouldn't the folded paper be extremly thin? I don't know how to explain it well, but wouldn't it be like a 'tower' that is insanely thin yet really tall? (just ignore me if it makes no sense, or is simply false. Never was good in science)

The illustrations is deceptive! The area of the surface of the paper gets smaller and smaller after each fold! So basically it gets as tiny as an atom after being folded for so many times. Which makes it a fun fact but literally impractical and undoable.

Teacher:what r you doing with the book? Me:going to the moon

Dang those origami skills are paying off

Why on earth are we converting cm to feet and miles instead of meters and kilometers?

Over 9000+ folds you can get to Planet Vegeta, but sadly Frieza destroyed it after you fold 8999 folds