Can Your Body Fit Through a Sheet of Paper?

🎂 5 + years ⏱️ 20 min 📍 Anywhere ⭐ medium

Imagine you're holding a sheet of paper in your hand. Just a regular one. Thin. Light. An A4 sheet, like the one you use every day at school. Now imagine: You can crawl through it with your whole body. Sounds like magic? It's all about trying, being amazed, and doing it yourself. This task is for you if you love tinkering. If you enjoy solving puzzles. If you sometimes think, 'That can't be possible!' and then are amazed that it actually works. Because your body is much bigger than an A4 sheet, right? And yet, you can fit through. If you know how.

What you'll need

A4 sheet of paper
A pair of scissors
A pen

How it works

You need a simple A4 sheet of paper. It's best if it's not thick paper. Regular copy paper will do. Soon it will become a secret door. Now fold the sheet in half lengthwise, from one narrow side to the other narrow side. Press the fold well.
Now take a pen. A felt-tip pen works best so you can see the lines clearly. Measure 2 cm from the bottom edge, once on the right and once on the left. Draw two lines from there, each starting from the closed side upwards, but stop 1 cm before the top edge.
Now continue drawing in the middle of your folded sheet. Alternate nicely. Leave some margin at the top and bottom. Soon this will become your giant paper tunnel!
Now it's time to cut, but not too far! Cut along all the lines, right on the line. Not all the way through! Do this for each line, take your time. If you want, you can count how many strips you have so far.
Now cut open the closed side. But be careful: Leave the very right and very left connection intact, do not cut through those! This will create a huge paper net that you can unfold.
Now carefully unfold your paper. A giant ring of paper is formed. And yes: You can definitely crawl through it with your whole body!