It is commonly claimed that you cannot fold a piece of paper in half more than seven times. That may be true for a standard piece of paper of A4 dimensions, but according to US teenage (at the time) mathematician Britney Gallivan the maximum number of folds is in fact dependent on the initial size of the sheet. In this video, Jack Baker from the University of Leicester, UK, answers the question “how many times could you fold a piece of paper as large as the size of the observable universe?” To find out the answer watch the video.

This is one of a collection of videos based on student projects from the University of Leicester’s “Physics Special Topics” course, in which students use their physics knowledge to define and answer a quirky or unusual research question. The videos are part of our 100 Second Science series.