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The Mystery of Why It's Impossible to Pull Apart Interleaved Phone Books - Solved

posted by martyb on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the Did-you-let-Chuck-Norris-try? dept.

AnonTechie writes:

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

[Source]: http://theconversation.com/solved-the-mystery-of-why-its-impossible-to-pull-apart-interleaved-phone-books-46697

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @02:52PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @02:52PM (#228995)

    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.