How many fourth dimension can you fold a piece of newspaper publisher ? There ’s a myth that you could not fold it perfectly in half more than eight times , but given a large enough piece of paper , and using herculean hydraulic equipment , you could fold a slice of paperas many time as you wanted .
TheHydraulic Press Channelon YouTube decided to employ this accurate eccentric of equipment to fold a man of A3 - sized newspaper seven time , something that is well difficult to do using just human hand . After set about to fold it for the 7th fourth dimension , however , it appears to cause the paper to explode , transforming the remnants into brickly , fractured pieces .
So why did the paper appear to burst ? Well , one possibility is that it was n’t the paper at all .
For any flake of paper , after the first fold , it doubles in thickness . Another sheepfold , and it quadruples in thickness . By the seventh fold , it would have become 128 times thicker than it was earlier . This is known asexponential growth , and explain why a bit of ordinary paper folded 23 times would be a kilometre ( 0.62 miles ) thick . Forty - two folding will stretch along out to the Moon , and 103 folding will expatiate beyond the observable universe .
At the same clock time , each extra fold is harder to make as it requires quickly increase amounts of pressure to squash the increasingly deep flake of newspaper . On the 7th fold , the hydraulic press is using unbelievable pressure in rules of order to achieve its destination . When the fold break the part of composition , the press all of a sudden jut forward , creating the explosion noise .
A few years back , the Mythbusters team successfully folded a much large routine of newspaper a total of 11 times with the aid of a road roller – and yet , there was no plosion . This seems to propose that the hydraulic closet is to blame for the explosion noise in the now - viral YouTube video .
However , another possibleness is that the " explosion " is down to the crystals ofcalcium carbonatefound within the paper , a common constituent total during the manufacture process . The tenseness put on the seventh faithful compact these stiff crystals to the point of sudden prostration , which led to the catastrophic failure of the newspaper .
