- #1
nalA
- 20
- 0
This is a bit of a silly question, but one I'm curious about ...
It all started when I made a status update on facebook proclaiming that if you could fold a piece of A4 paper in half 44 times it would reach the moon.
One of the commenters made an interesting point by saying:
I explained that I was talking about the (purely theoretical act) of doubling the thickness of a piece of paper 44 times, but it did make me wonder: Are there enough atoms in a piece of A4 paper to reach the moon?
So ... what I would now like to know is: If you took all the carbon atoms in an A4 piece of paper, re-arranged them to form a single nano-tube (of the most tightly rolled up variety) would its length exceed the distance between the Earth and the moon?
I would love to see some rough calculations along with the assumptions made in order to provide an answer to this question.
Thanks :)
Alan
It all started when I made a status update on facebook proclaiming that if you could fold a piece of A4 paper in half 44 times it would reach the moon.
One of the commenters made an interesting point by saying:
Surely if you fold it in half it gets smaller. Assuming you could fold it in half 44 times then it would get a lot smaller. If you fold something that begins life not being able to reach the moon, doesn't that mean it will reach the moon even less than in its pre-folded state?
I explained that I was talking about the (purely theoretical act) of doubling the thickness of a piece of paper 44 times, but it did make me wonder: Are there enough atoms in a piece of A4 paper to reach the moon?
So ... what I would now like to know is: If you took all the carbon atoms in an A4 piece of paper, re-arranged them to form a single nano-tube (of the most tightly rolled up variety) would its length exceed the distance between the Earth and the moon?
I would love to see some rough calculations along with the assumptions made in order to provide an answer to this question.
Thanks :)
Alan
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