Can you fold a check in half

If you absolutely must send cash, conceal it with paper so the envelope does not attract thieves. Skip to content Lifehacks. May 1, Joe Ford. This varies from place to place, but most banks will only offer this option to their customers.

That makes it your responsibility to get it to the recipient. This does save you a trip to the bank, but it will still take longer since you have to rely on the mail. Security features printed onto the check prevent any possible forgery. This is because the bank has guaranteed that the funds will be available. But when the bank discovers that the check is a forgery, often a few weeks after the deposit, they take the money back.

Unfortunately, the recipient is out of pocket for any money that has been spent. That's what many people thought until a high school student named Britney Gallivan proved everyone wrong back in Britney successfully folded a 4,foot-long roll of toilet paper an unheard-of 12 times! As if that wasn't impressive enough, she also developed a mathematical theorem that allows you to calculate the maximum number of folds possible based upon factors such as paper thickness, paper length, and direction of folding.

As you can see, paper can be folded more than seven times. You just need to use bigger and bigger pieces of paper to increase the number of folds possible. It can be fun to play with the mathematics of paper folding to see how thickness increases exponentially with each fold.

If you could keep folding it, at 23 folds it would be one kilometer 3, feet thick! At 42 folds, it would extend to the Moon and, finally, at a whopping folds, that piece of paper would exceed the size of the observable universe at over 93 billion light-years in diameter!

Are you ready for some origami? Grab a friend or family member and check out the following activities:. Great job, scarlet! We hope you learned more about why it is so difficult to fold a paper more than 6 times! Great question, Kevin! It's hard to choose only one! We liked them all! We hope you search for Wonders about dinosaurs! Thanks for sharing your results, coleman! Can you fold it in HALF more than 7 times? Let us know what you find out! We're glad you liked this Wonder, Kerry!

Hi, Carter's Dog! We're glad you had fun exploring this Wonder! Are you able to fold it in HALF 7 times? There are many different types of paper! We encourage you to use the search feature to find Wonders about paper! Hi, Wonder Friend! Thanks for sharing! We're you able to fold the paper in HALF 7 times? Let us know what happens! Great question, Kerry! You can use the search feature to find Wonders about volcanoes and animals.

You can also research at the library and online to learn more! Most regular paper can't be folded in half more than seven times because of the paper's size and thickness, Gracie.

What other information does today's Wonder tell you about folding paper? Hi, damarrion! We're sorry to hear you're not having fun. We encourage you to explore the other Wonders on the site.

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Banks have to protect themselves against check fraud. Without proper proof of identity, a bank can legally refuse to cash a check made out to your name. The bank may demand that these proofs be "valid," or current, even though your picture is right on it.

Say a business owner wants to cash a check written to the business. That may seem harmless enough, but it might not be cashable if the owner has not followed through with a few simple—and necessary—procedures. He tries to cash that check at a nearby bank, but the bank teller refuses to complete the transaction unless John can provide proof of valid business registration with the state. Business owners need to take two steps to prevent the problem:. Both these steps are needed for other purposes, notably for tax filing, but they'll also save aggravation at the bank.

If you don't have an account at that bank, you may be charged a check-cashing fee, especially if you go to the payor's bank.

Not all bank branches can handle a large cash transaction without advance notice. Credit unions and smaller branches of large national bank chains may not have the necessary cash on-site to clear a very large check.

It will not be willing to hand most or all of it to a single customer and tell the next customer that the bank is out of cash. When you have a check for a very large amount of money, call ahead to the manager of the bank branch you intend to visit.

The bank manager will advise you whether you should go in by appointment, go to the main branch, or even go to another bank that can handle the transaction. Some checks carry notices indicating that they will become void after a certain period of time. Once that date has passed, these checks are referred to as stale dated. Some checks can become stale-dated as early as 60 days, while others may be 90 to days. While the Federal Reserve considers those notices to be guidelines, some banks are very conservative and won't budge.

If you wait too long to cash a check, a bank can refuse to cash it. Legally, a bank can refuse to cash any check that is older than six months. Some banks may decide to cash it anyway as a favor to a long-time customer, but that is entirely at the bank's discretion.

Another reason a bank may not be able to cash a check that is too old is that the routing number of the institution issuing the check may have changed as a result of a merger or acquisition.