Folding paper in half

How in the world would that be folding a piece of paper in half?

Not in the same sense that paper may be folded, which is probably why paper, not blankets, is used for origami. Thing is, this whole topic was always more semantics than physics.

So a U is folded?

Mangetout, with respect, the only person who is attempting to make it a semantics exercise is you. And your semantics are, as has been shown, questionable, both from the standpoint of the plain meaning of the word and from the standpoint of logic. Give up while you are behind. :smiley:

If it’s moved as far as it can go 'cause there’s stuff in it, yes, add that to the definition if it makes you happy. A tortilla is folded around stuff in a U shape to make a taco.

So what are we agreed on then?.

Can a piece of paper, irrespective of size, be folded in half more than 7 times or not?

Why would you define it as folded simply because there’s something inside it preventing it being creased? Why does that make sense at all?

Surely you mean “Wrapped” around

I feel sure that all we’re disagreeing on is the point at which a bend is or is not a fold.
Suppose Christo took a very, very long piece of paper and wrapped it three-quarters of the way around Notre Dame Stadium - the stadium has two parallel straight sides, so the paper would form a U shape - with 2n straight parallel sections - the paper has moved as far as it can, because it’s folded around the stadium, except, folded really isn’t an appropriate word here, is it? But why not?

From Chambers:

Bend…To force into a bow or out of a curved or angled form. To form or cause a curve.

Fold…A doubling of anything upon itself: a crease, a part laid over another.

The above among many explanations

I’ll bow to your Google-fu. I saw where it said her first attempt was with foil. But I’m positive that the paper shown in the pictures was basically toilet paper. You can see how narrow it is. Ahhh…here’s a site that states it was toilet paper.

But I’ll admit that it seems like the UL does seem to imply “any size or shape” of paper.

I wonder if there is video of Ms. Gallivan folding the material. Not that I doubt that there are the correct number of layers or anything, but I suspect that the paper is more laid than folded, if I might be allowed to make the distinction. In the photos that I’ve seen she’s posed with the paper stack at the 11 fold step; I would bet that to go to 12 folds would require that the stack be unfolded and refolded from the start, rather than just adding one more fold on top of the previously made folds. It would be possible, although tedious, to lay the paper out on edge on the floor in a series of gentle curves that would collapse down to the folded shape in one final move.

Think of it this way: if you drive a bunch of nails into a wall, you can take a paper tape and thread it through and around the nails in such a way that, when pulled off the wall and allowed to settle flat, the tape would show the same pattern of layers as a ‘folded’ tape. She could just be planning really far ahead and leaving extra material in some places that will later be taken up by the folds, but this would leave the intermediate stages looking very buckled and not really ‘folded’.