Occasionally on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog I ask readers for help, for example with preference of book covers, or for other input when writing new stories. Once again I'm in need of help and this time I'm looking for a cross sample of how people would respond to a specific question. This is the scenario...

The Moon. Reachable by origami, hypothetically.

In a forthcoming book which I'm writing called The Quiz Master, the main character asks a group of people the following question...

"How many times would you have to fold a piece of paper in half before it would be thick enough to reach the Moon?"

Now in reality you can't fold a regular piece of paper more than 7 or 8 times before it becomes impossible to fold it any more, but if it was a hypothetical situation where you could fold a piece of paper as many times as you wanted, how many times would you have to fold it before it was thick enough to reach to the Moon?

Just to clarify, I'm not trying to find out the actual answer. I know how to use Google so if I wanted to know the answer I wouldn't go to the bother of creating a poll! In fact a friend asked me this question many years ago, so I already know the answer. What I'm interested in is what other people would guess, and what sort of typical spread the main character would get with the answers.

In order to keep your options as wide as possible, I've included the full spectrum of possible answers ranging from the ridiculously low to the ridiculously high.  However, obviously I couldn't include every single individual answer (that would be a very long poll!), so I've grouped possible answers into fairly wide bands.


Please take no longer than ten seconds to think about your answer (that's how long the characters in the book will have), and please only complete the poll if you don't already know the answer. Also, please don't look the answer up. Once again, I'm looking for a cross section of answers from people based on their gut feeling.

Finally, the only clues the main character gives the others is:

i) A typical sheet of paper is 0.1 mm thick.
ii) The Moon is on average 384,000 kilometres away from the Earth.
iii) Remember, the width doubles with every fold (fairly obvious).

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to complete the poll.

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If you want to know the answer I'll post the exact number of folds next week!  Or if you're too impatient to wait you could probably Google the answer, but please complete the poll first before looking up the answer.

To reiterate, it's not a competition, so you don't win anything if you get it right!  I'm just looking to get a cross section of what people's gut reaction would be.




Update: This was just a random question with no serious consequences, but for the characters in The Quiz Master, the answers they give have serious ramifications. If you want to find out just how serious the consequences are, then you can find out in The Quiz Master which is now available for kindle from Amazon.