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re: 77 true facts that sound like lies

Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:50 pm to
Posted by Indfanfromcol
LSU
Member since Jan 2011
14932 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:50 pm to
LINK


quote:


Well, let’s see how we’d figure it out. I don’t know how thick one piece of paper is, but I know it’s pretty thin. I can, however, estimate how big those 500 page reams are. They’re about 2 inches high, so maybe that’s about 5 cm. That means one page is about 0.01 cm high. And what of the Moon?

Mean distance from the Earth is about 384,000 km, or about 3.84 x 1012 pages away. So you’d expect that you’ll need an awful lot of foldings to get there, right? Well, hang on for a second.

When I start with an unfolded page (zero foldings), it’s one page thick. When I fold a page once, it will be 2 pages thick. But — and this is key — when I fold it twice on itself, it’s not three, but 4 pages thick.

If I fold it a third time, I’ll see that it’s 8 pages thick. Can you see a pattern here? Paper folding is exponential, so that if I fold it a fourth time, it’ll be 16 pages thick (so that option is clearly wrong), a fifth time will give me 32 pages thick, and so on. By time I get to 9 foldings, my folded paper is bigger than my original ream of 500 sheets. By time I get to 20 foldings, my folded paper is more than 10 kilometers high, which surpasses Mt. Everest. 41 foldings will get me slightly more than halfway to the Moon, so that means that 42 foldings is all it takes! (Of course, good luck folding a real piece of paper more than 7 or 8 times…)

Pretty incredible, isn’t it? But that’s the power of an exponential, that it lets you turn small things into huge things by simply compounding what you have over and over again. And incredibly, it only takes 42 foldings of a paper to get from the Earth to the Moon, and only about 94 foldings of a paper to make something the size of the entire visible Universe! And how surprised are you that the answer is so small a number?
Posted by genro
Member since Nov 2011
62604 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:50 pm to
quote:

Yep. It's like if you double a penny every day for a month. You'll be very rich.
If someone said they'd give you a million dollars a day for a month, or they'd give you a penny on day one and double it every day for a month.... take the penny.
Posted by TROCKS50
Member since Jan 2013
1188 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:51 pm to


The breath you took right now contained some of the same hydrogen and oxygen atoms that Jesus took.
Posted by Displaced
Member since Dec 2011
33050 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:51 pm to
quote:

75. At the time the current oldest person on Earth was born, there was a completely different set of human beings on the planet.


duh...
Posted by Shexter
Prairieville
Member since Feb 2014
20756 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:51 pm to
quote:

If a piece of paper were folded 42 times, it would reach to the moon.

quote:

Why can’t you fold a piece of paper more than seven times?

If you have a normal sheet of notebook paper and you try to fold it in half multiple times, you probably cannot get it to fold more than 6 times. Maybe 7 if you are really strong. That maximum limit is caused by two things:

1) The number of layers of paper doubles with each fold. So you start with a single layer, then you have two layers, then four, then eight, then 16, then 32, then 64 layers after six folds. Maybe if you are very strong, and you use a pair of pliers, you can get to seven folds and 128 layers, but it probably won’t be pretty.

2) At that point the sheet of paper is so small, and the number of layers so large relative to the small size, and the distortion caused by the folds so great, that there is no way to fold it again. You can’t apply enough leverage, and the fibers of the paper do not have enough flexibility for another fold.

But what if you used a much larger piece of paper, so that you can diminish the effects of fold distortion and paper fiber flexibility? If you use a big enough sheet of paper, you can get to 11 folds, or 2,048 layers, before you reach the limitations of folding. See this video for a demonstration:


MYTHBUSTERS - FOLDING PAPER 11 TIMES WITH A STEAM ROLLER.
This post was edited on 3/28/14 at 1:52 pm
Posted by hawgfaninc
https://youtu.be/torc9P4-k5A
Member since Nov 2011
63437 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:51 pm to
for the lazy...

1. If you put your finger in your ear and scratch, it sounds just like Pac-Man.
2. The YKK on your zipper stands for “Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikigaisha.”
3. Maine is the closest U.S. state to Africa.
4. Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Walters were born in the same year, 1929.
5. The name Jessica was created by Shakespeare in the play Merchant of Venice.
6. Cashews grow like this:
7. And pineapples grow like this:
8. Cleopatra lived closer to the invention of the iPhone than she did to the building of the Great Pyramid.
9. Russia has a larger surface area than Pluto.
10. Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia.
11. Hippo milk is pink.
12. The toy Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
13. Woody from Toy Story has a full name too — it’s Woody Pride.
14. And while we’re at it, Mr. Clean’s full name is Veritably Clean.
15. Oh, and Cookie Monster’s real name is Sid.
16. Carrots were originally purple.
17. The heart of a blue whale is so big, a human can swim through the arteries.
18. Vending machines are twice as likely to kill you than a shark is.
19. Home Alone was released closer to the moon landing than it was to today.
20. Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.
21. Not once in the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme does it mention that he’s an egg.
22. France was still executing people with a guillotine when the first Star Wars film came out.
23. Armadillos nearly always give birth to identical quadruplets.
24. Betty White is actually older than sliced bread.
25. The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland.
26. A strawberry isn’t a berry but a banana is.
27. So are avocados and watermelon.
28. New York City is further south than Rome, Italy.
29. North Korea and Finland are separated by one country.
30. Mammoths went extinct 1,000 years after the Egyptians finished building the Great Pyramid.
31. There are more fake flamingos in the world than real flamingos.
32. Nintendo was founded as a trading card company back in 1889.
33. The man who voiced Fry on Futurama, Billy West, also voiced Doug on Doug.
34. The last time the Chicago Cubs won the baseball World Series, the Ottoman Empire still existed.
35. And lollipops had not yet been invented.
36. And women did not have the right to vote in the United States.
37. If you shrunk the sun down to the size of a white blood cell and shrunk the Milky Way Galaxy down using the same scale, it would be the size of the continental United States.
38. John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, has a grandson who’s alive today.
39. Will Smith is now older than Uncle Phil was at the beginning of The Fresh Prince.
40. The show the The Wonder Years aired from 1988–1993 and covered the years 1968–1973. Today, in 2014, if one were to make a similar show, it would cover the years 1994–1999.
41. Humans share 50% of their DNA with bananas.
42. Duck Hunt is a two-player game. Player two controls the ducks.
43. The difference in time between when Tyrannosaurus Rex and Stegosaurus lived is greater than the difference in time between Tyrannosaurus Rex and now.
44. One more fact about the Cubs: The last time they won the world series, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, and New Mexico were not yet states.
45. Speaking of Alaska — it’s simultaneously the most northern, the most western, and the most eastern state in the U.S.
46. Pluto never made a full orbit around the sun from the time it was discovered to when it was declassified as a planet.
47. A thousand seconds is about 16 minutes.
48. A million seconds is about 11 days.
49. A billion seconds is about 32 years.
50. And one trillion seconds is about 32,000 years. A trillion is a lot.
51. But the good news is: Honey never spoils. You can eat 32,000-year-old honey.
52. There are more stars in space than there are grains of sand on every beach on Earth.
53. And there’s enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America in one foot of water.
54. There are more public libraries than McDonald’s in the U.S.
55. For every human on Earth there are approximately 1.6 million ants. The total weight of all those ants is approximately the same as the total weight of all the humans on Earth.
56. An octopus has three hearts.
57. Mario hits blocks with his hand, not his head.
58. The CEO of Food For The Poor is named Robin Mahfood.
59. One in every 5,000 babies is born with a condition known as “imperforate anus.” This means the baby is born without an anus and has to have one created manually in the hospital.
60. You can’t hum while holding your nose.
61. It rains diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter.
62. Also, this is what Jupiter would look like if it were as close to us as the Moon is:
63. And this is what sand looks like under a microscope:
64. If a piece of paper were folded 42 times, it would reach to the moon.
65. The pyramids were as old to the Romans as the Romans are to us.
66. If you dug a hole to the center of the Earth and dropped a book down, it would take 42 minutes to reach the bottom.
67. There is 10 times more bacteria in your body than actual body cells.
68. And 90% of the cells that make us up of aren’t human but mostly fungi and bacteria.
69. Every two minutes, we take more pictures than all of humanity in the 19th century.
70. Peanuts are not nuts. They grow in the ground, so they are legumes.
71. Turtles can breathe out of their butts.
72. The dot over an “i” is called a “tittle.”
73. There are more atoms in a glass of water than glasses of water in all the oceans on Earth.
74. The probability of you drinking a glass of water that contains a molecule of water that also passed through a dinosaur is almost 100%.
75. At the time the current oldest person on Earth was born, there was a completely different set of human beings on the planet.
76. And at the time you were born, you were briefly the youngest person in the entire world.
77. And, finally, “dog food lid” backwards is “dildo of God.”
Posted by Larry
Collierville, TN
Member since Jul 2004
5498 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:51 pm to
I understand the logic behind the thickness argument, however it should have read

quote:

If a piece of paper was able to be folded 42 times, it would reach to the moon.
Posted by Displaced
Member since Dec 2011
33050 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:52 pm to
what adult doesn't understand exponents?

that was probably written for a fifth grader...
This post was edited on 3/28/14 at 1:54 pm
Posted by cas4t
Member since Jan 2010
72157 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:53 pm to
quote:

71. Turtles can breathe out of their butts.


whaa
Posted by Displaced
Member since Dec 2011
33050 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:54 pm to
quote:

MYTHBUSTERS - FOLDING PAPER 11 TIMES WITH A STEAM ROLLER.


they cheated though. you are supposed to use a sheet of looseleaf.
Posted by LordSaintly
Member since Dec 2005
43165 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:55 pm to
quote:

what adult doesn't understand exponents?


There are probably a shite ton of people who don't understand exponents.
Posted by Peazey
Metry
Member since Apr 2012
25426 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:55 pm to
One that I heard that seems fairly dubious is that there are more possible different games of chess than atoms in the observable universe.
Posted by Displaced
Member since Dec 2011
33050 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:56 pm to
quote:

There are probably a shite ton of people who don't understand exponents.


troof, i redact my comment.
Posted by dallastiger55
Jennings, LA
Member since Jan 2010
34184 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:57 pm to
the one about Alaska is BS, its not the furthest east US state
Posted by olemc999
At a blackjack table
Member since Oct 2010
15288 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:57 pm to
quote:

16. Carrots were originally purple.


I actually knew this. Good Eats was an awesome show.
Posted by LordSaintly
Member since Dec 2005
43165 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:58 pm to
quote:

troof, i redact my comment.


I mean, I agree with you, but most people suck at basic math.
Posted by CarRamrod
Spurbury, VT
Member since Dec 2006
58514 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:58 pm to
quote:

If someone said they'd give you a million dollars a day for a month, or they'd give you a penny on day one and double it every day for a month.... take the penny.

well a penny doubled for 31 days is 21,474,836.48.

so i think i was take 31 million over 21.5 million
Posted by Indfanfromcol
LSU
Member since Jan 2011
14932 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:59 pm to
quote:

the one about Alaska is BS, its not the furthest east US state



A part of Alaska reaches into the eastern hemisphere.
Posted by Larry
Collierville, TN
Member since Jul 2004
5498 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 1:59 pm to
I've always found these amusing

Zeno's paradoxes
Posted by Displaced
Member since Dec 2011
33050 posts
Posted on 3/28/14 at 2:00 pm to
quote:

well a penny doubled for 31 days is 21,474,836.48. so i think i was take 31 million over 21.5 million



yeah, he messed it up. it is supposed to be a million flat vs a penny doubled every day for a month.
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