If a piece of paper were big enough and if you could fold it exactly in half 100 times, how thick would it be?

Well, it would be pretty tough, if not impossible, to do it.

But if you were, each fold would double the thickness.

If x was the initial thickness, then the progression would be :

x--no folds

2x--1 fold

4x = (2^2)x--two folds

8x = (2^3)x--three folds...

so after 100 folds, you get (2^100)x

which equals (2^100)*.003=1.2676506*10^30*.003

=3.8029518 × 10^27 inches thick, or about 3,802,951,800,000,000,000,000,000,000 inches thick...

OR 60,021,335,200,000,000,000,000 miles thick! Whew!

Every time you folded it, it would get twice as thick.

So, after 100 folds, it will be 2^100 times as thick which is about:

2^100*(0.003 in)

= 3.8029518x10^27 inches

= 6.00213352x10^22 miles

= 6.45696973x10^14 astronomical units

= 1.02103151x10^10 lightyears

= 3.13042726x10^9 parsecs

= 100,000 times the width of the Milky Way

Which is somewhere between 20% and 100% of the diameter of the known universe.

This is clearly not practical, and impossible to do on earth.

if a piece of paper is .003 thick, if you fold it in half, it would be 0.003*2. if you fold it in half again, you will get four layer. so the number of layers would double each time you fold it. So i think the equation would be

let n be the number of times you fold it in half/

0.003 x 2 ^ n

so in this case, it would be

0.003 x 2^ 100

2 ^100 x .003

The progression is: 1, (at n=0), 2, 4, 8, 16, ....

so the number of thicknesses is 2^n

(where n = No. of folds)

(If this is other than a theoretical exponential math question,

be aware that physical limits restrict the number of folds to

about seven before the paper must start to tear.)

It is impossible to fold a piece of paper in half 100 times: the world record is 12 times, and the paper that is used is hundreds of feet long, and the thinnest toilet paper that can be found.

Hope this helps

thickness doubles each time you fold it, so 0.003 x 2^100

or 3.80e+27 inch

or 6.00e+22 mile

or 1.02e+10 light years

bigger than the size of the galaxy.

.