The Lemon Fool

http://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2017/0 ... -universe/

Rob

"Well, if we assume that a sheet of copy paper is approximately .004 inches thick, then its thickness after fifty folds is a little over sixty million miles. This equals the distance between the earth and the sun"

If this is a quote from The Art of Thinking Clearly, then it is unfortunate that the author is unable to master The Art of Getting One's Facts Right or The Art of Using A Calculator.

Interesting to know where someone might find such a gargantuan piece of paper as well, let alone have the ability to fold it even once. My back of the envelope calculation (could be wrong) is that for the final folded result to occupy 1 square foot, the unfolded paper would have an area of about 40 million square miles.

hiriskpaul wrote:"Well, if we assume that a sheet of copy paper is approximately .004 inches thick, then its thickness after fifty folds is a little over sixty million miles. This equals the distance between the earth and the sun"

If this is a quote from The Art of Thinking Clearly, then it is unfortunate that the author is unable to master The Art of Getting One's Facts Right or The Art of Using A Calculator.

Interesting to know where someone might find such a gargantuan piece of paper as well, let alone have the ability to fold it even once. My back of the envelope calculation (could be wrong) is that for the final folded result to occupy 1 square foot, the unfolded paper would have an area of about 40 million square miles.

Paul, it's very rare for you to trip over in your maths but sadly this is one such occasion!

It's impossible for the final folded paper to occupy a square foot of area. Its minimal length and width is 20 million miles by 10 million miles. That makes its volume about 8 x 10^21 cubic miles. Therefore you'd have to start with a volume of paper equal to about 25,000 suns or 25 billion earths. [Could be wrong!!!]

I suggest using a much thinner sheet of paper, perhaps a single cellulose molecule thickness would work? Haven't done the maths... Another solution it cutting and stacking instead of folding, in which case your calculation works, need a hell of a guillotine though!

You're right about the lack of Clear Thinking in the article.


GS

Many of us can do these easy sums of course and it is all good fun.

There was nothing much wrong with the article, which was about broad concepts, rather than its detail. And compounding and exponential growth is so badly understood generally anyway.

As for folding the paper, sheet size is the least of the practical problems because it would become way too strong to fold at all, immensely strong, after a relatively small number of folds anyway, way way before the numbers of theoretical folds we are talking about.

Now using 'graphene paper', not yet available in the store near you, sadly, might get there...but could be expensive and a tad impractical to handle.

I see a shadow whichever way we look at it on this second of Feb.

Ozyu

On the subject of exponential growth, Albert Bartlett's video has a cult following:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY