So someone sent me one of those ‘did you know’ lists.. full of odd little factoids. One of them was: any sheet of paper can only be folded in half at most 7 times…

I thought about that one, quickly. Tried it with a sheet from a broadsheet, got to eight, but sure, the last ‘fold’ was pretty scrunchy… not sure if it counts. Folding something already 128 sheets thick into something about an inch across, okay, kinda awkward.

But I got to thinking: you can buy newsprint in 1700 foot rolls…

The calculation, in case you’re wondering, comes to:

If you folded it only along its length each time, and insisted upon going to eight folds to prove your point, you’d wind up with something about 6 feet long…

The last fold would be through 128 sheets of paper. At one end, you’d have a fold already through 64. The result, of course, would be 256 sheets thick… I expect you’d want to use your foot for that last fold…

Okay, so you’d need a rather large* warehouse, to do it practically. The point is (or points, there are two) …

1. Yes, I’m pretty sure you could do this, if you really needed to prove your point, and

2. Yes, I actually stop to think about such things.

*Actually, now that I think about it again: you’d probably do it with three spindles, and a relatively small warehouse… most of it, up to the last few folds, you’d just do by spindling half off a fully loaded spindle onto an empty one, folding it at the half, and feeding the fold onto the third spindle… probably around the time you had a 25 foot roll 64 sheets thick, you’d want to spool it out on the floor, and find other methods… bearing in mind those other methods would involve picking up half a pretty freakin’ heavy roll at a time… I’m thinkin’ a small crane might also be involved… this is left as an exercise for the reader.