Reaching the moon!
Consider a standard A4 paper, with ~0.1mm thickness. What is the smallest number of times you will need to fold that paper so that its thickness is at least equal to the distance between the earth and the moon?
You may take the distance earth-moon to be approximately 384,000km.
Hint : it is less than 100, because, at 100 folds, your paper will stretch well over our galaxy!
The answer is 42.
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1 solution
There are 10,000 0.1 mm for every 1 m. Take 384,000 kilometers, and convert it into meters: 1 km = 1,000 m, so the distance to the moon is roughly 384 million meters. 384,000 000 × 10,000 is a 13-digit number: 3.84 x 10^12 . The first whole 13-digit number large enough is 42.