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People, trucks and even military tanks have tried and failed the task of pulling apart two phone books lying face up with their pages interleaved, like a shuffled deck of cards. While physicists have long known that this must be due to enormous frictional forces, exactly how these forces are generated has been an enigma – until now.
A team of physicists from France and Canada has discovered that it is the layout of the books coupled with the act of pulling that is producing the force.
http://phys.org/news/2015-08-mystery-impossible-interleaved.html
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The Mystery of Why It's Impossible to Pull Apart Interleaved Phone Books - Solved
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(Score: 4, Informative) by Freeman on Thursday August 27 2015, @10:28PM
The Mythbusters have already tackled this beast and it took a mere 8,000 lbs of force to pull them apart. It's a very interesting episode.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @11:20PM
> The Mythbusters have already tackled this beast and it took a mere 8,000 lbs of force to pull them apart. It's a very interesting episode.
The amount of force required is the what of the problem.
Did they also explain the why of the problem?
The point of this research wasn't to measure absolutes, but to figure out a working model of the forces involved and produce a formula for calculating them so guys like the mythbusters wouldn't have to resort to empirical measurements.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @03:05AM
So they are replacing science (empiricism) with rationalism (math). But, but, science is supposed to be the end all be all of accurate human knowledge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @05:30AM
That's some shitty trolling. You should at very least understand that science is not "empiricism". Science is usage of scientific method, which includes math.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @12:14PM
It isn't a troll, and you are wrong. Science requires evidence, ergo empiricism, no scare quotes required. Math does not require evidence. It is a self-contained implementation of rationalism just as science is an implementation of empiricism.
This is junior college level knowledge, how could one person mark it troll and another not even grasp the fundamentals to understand the question on a tech news website?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @02:52PM
Uh...
So you come up with a cool formula. Now is it right? What do you do? You do something like what the mythbusters guys did and TRY it. Does it match your results? If not why not?
Mythbusters is usually 'lets try' and then if that does not work 'lets blow it out with crazy'. Yes their 'science' is weak. But it is also entertainment. They usually follow the model fairly ok. Their rigor could use a bit of work though. Theory->work out the plans to test->Test->retry->Test->retry->some conclusions, or more test needed, or 'impossible'. They even go back and re-try things all the time. They also come to bad conclusions all the time. That is science. It is messy and does not work right all the time. For example the speed camera one was good example. They said 'cant do it' then the top gear guys say 'well you need a faster car'. They got a rocket car (bit sensationalist) and sure enough they said 'yep we were wrong'.
Their whole show is based around 'lets take these crazy ideas people have and TEST them'. They throw in some fun because science does not have to be dry and boring.
You know the other half of science... Test test test test test and test some more and then see if someone else can replicate it.
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Friday August 28 2015, @04:02PM
So they are replacing science (empiricism) with rationalism (math).
Not at all. They are replacing ignorance with enlightenment, and using science to do it. Many similar efforts have in the past created useful models for the world around us; F=ma and E=mc^2 are famous examples, and familiar to even grade school children.
Where you appear to be mistaken (and the probable reason for your troll mod) is that the difference between empiricism and rationalism isn't the use of math, but the use of experiment to test our reasoned speculations. Rationalism is great at coming up with reasonable explanations for phenomena we observe, but can lead us to wrong conclusions when we have incomplete knowledge of the subject. Empiricism takes the reasoned speculation from rationalism a step further and verifies or refutes the reasoning based on a test.
The current topic for discussion, friction between interleaved books, is a great example. There were several theories proposed for how the friction was caused, all of which were inadequate because they did not account for significant factors of which their proponents were unaware. An approach based on rationalism would simply say "my explanation makes sense, so it must be the correct answer", and continue to be incorrect. The latest experiments, reported on in TFA, disproved the theory that friction would increase linearly with the thickness of the books, found out what the true relationship is, then created a model suitable for making accurate predictions. That model was then tested for validity.
Math as a tool in empiricism is fine. In this case, it brought a poorly-understood phenomenon from the realm of "here's a table of past results" to "here's an equation you can use to design new inventions around this phenomenon". As long as there's a test involved to verify the validity of the equation math will hurdle the gap from rationalism to empiricism with style.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday August 28 2015, @03:45PM
The title is false though "The Mystery of Why It's Impossible to Pull Apart Interleaved Phone Books - Solved". By that reasoning, there should be a definitive answer as to why it's impossible to pull them apart. Not why it's really, really, hard to pull them apart.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @10:14AM
You're just being pedantic. It is essentially impossible for a human to pull them apart without using heavy machinery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:37AM
What did they blow up in *that* episode?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @04:05PM
They destroyed the books (binding ripped off), they did not successfully separate them.