Anyone watch Myth Busters lastnight?

[pontooner]

Thought I'd get out of the political threads business for awhile.

Anyway they took two 800 page phone books and interlaced the pages one on top of the other and tried to pull them apart from each other various ways.

The first was a tug-o-war between the two host and they couldn't pull them apart.

Then it was a 5 on 5 tug-o-war and they still couldn't pull them apart.

Next they tried to pull them apart tug-o-war style with two mid sized front wheel drive cars and that didn't work. The cars just sat there spinning their wheels.

Finally they used two tanks. Yes tanks and eventually pulled them apart.

It took 8000lbs of pressure to pull them apart.

I tried it with two smaller phone books and couldn't pull them apart with my hands and I did a sorry job of interlacing the pages on top of each other.

It has something to do with the friction of the pages laying on top of each other.

Man I love that show.

[DJD]

When you say interlaced does that mean your taking page one from book "a" and laying it on page one of book "b" and so on? I picture it as when you shuffle cards. Is that the way they did it? How far in did they stick the pages? All the way to the binder side?
That is hard to imagine but I can see that without air between the pages the paper can stick like glue!

[MsgMills]

Sounds neat, I to like that show and am amazed at how they do all the tests to validate the myths. Especially when they found out that you can't be killed by a bullet being fired up into the air and dropping on your head. Proved it would not and could not kill you.......

[pontooner]

When you say interlaced does that mean your taking page one from book "a" and laying it on page one of book "b" and so on? I picture it as when you shuffle cards. Is that the way they did it? How far in did they stick the pages? All the way to the binder side?
That is hard to imagine but I can see that without air between the pages the paper can stick like glue!

Yeah one page on top of the other like you described and the pages looked to be about half way in . Of course with the phone books being so thick there was really no way to put them in any futher.


With my little experiment with it I had very few of the one page right on top of the other because that would have taken forever. Mine was more like 3, 5, 10,3............. pages on top of each other and I still couldnt budge it.

I saw that one to MSGMills. It was interesting but I bet it would still hurt like the dickens if it hit you. I've been sprayed with shotgun pellets a few times while dove hunting and it didn't feel very good.