Paper folding calculator
Your stack is440,000 km
You've reachedThe Moon
Folds
| Folds | Milestone | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0.1 mm | |
| 3 | 0.76 mm | |
| 7 | 8 mm | |
| 10 | 10 cm | |
| 13 | 81.9 cm | |
| 15 | 2.72 m | |
| 16 | 4 m | |
| 19 | 30 m | |
| 20 | 93 m | |
| 22 | 330 m | |
| 23 | 828 m | |
| 27 | 8.85 km | |
| 30 | 100 km | |
| 32 | 420 km | |
| 42 | 384,000 km | |
| 49 | 54.6 million km | |
| 51 | 150 million km | |
| 56 | 4.5 billion km | |
| 58 | 25 billion km | |
| 69 | 4.24 light-years | |
| 83 | 100,000 light-years | |
| 88 | 2.5 million light-years | |
| 103 | 93 billion light-years |
Can you really fold paper that many times?
No. Each fold doubles the thickness and halves the length, so you run out of paper long before you run out of folds. The record is 13 folds, set in December 2011 by a teacher and his students with about 16 km of toilet paper.
In 2002 Britney Gallivan worked out how long a strip has to be to fold it a given number of times, then proved it by folding one 12 times. To fold paper to the Moon you would need a sheet longer than the Milky Way is wide.