When I heard the answer, it was completely mind-blowing. It makes logical sense if you sit down and think about it, but it is by no means intuitive.<p>I went around my school asking people how thick they thought it would be. Answers ranged from a few centimeters to a meter to a mile. One person was a lot more in the ball range after doing a quick calculation estimate in his head. However, it is still quite obvious that none of us can understand or truly comprehend exponential growth.<p>Anyways, after you've made a guess about what you think the answer is, find out the actual thickness here: http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-most-mind-blowing-facts/all_comments/Jeremy-Richardson
I just went and folded a piece of paper fifty times. It's about 5mm thick.<p>Oh, did you mean fold in <i>half</i> fifty times so that its thickness becomes 2^50 * (thickness of one sheet)? Well, that's clearly physically impossible, so I just concertina-ed it.
Because of the unevenness of the folds, somewhat MORE than 2^50 times the thickness of the paper, which gets to be an astounding thickness.<p>After edit: suggestion for a title rewrite: "Thickness of piece of paper after 50 folds in half?
"If you could fold a piece of paper in half 50 times, its thickness will be 3/4 the distance from the Earth to the Sun (71 million miles)" - <a href="http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-most-mind-blowing-facts/all_comments/Jeremy-Richardson" rel="nofollow">http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-most-mind-blowing-...</a>