Today on Head Squeeze we are going to do, probably the biggest Mega Live Experiment
we've done so far. And I'll give you three hints, it's gonna
involve a couple of phone books, a lot of friction and a car as well. So make sure the
coefficient of friction between your bum and your seats are perfect because this is gonna
be a big one. So the main concerns we got at the moment
is when we're lifting this car to get the centre of mass right so it doesn't wobble
one way or the other because the engine is in the front and I'm assuming there's nothing
in the boot. There might be paper or some old clothes but nothing other than that. If
we got the phone books in there and we don't get that balance right, you can see it tipping
forwards now, the engine in the front is really really heavy so we gotta get that just right
before we get the phone books in there otherwise it might mess up the whole Live Experiment.
So in this whole system we got a crane that can lift over 10 tonnes, we got a car which
is well over a tonne or a thousand kilograms and then we're gonna introduce the phone books
which at the moment we've built them but we don't know how much they're gonna take. So
we hope it's over that magic mark of one thousand kilograms.
So what we'll do with the phone books is when we've got this car is lying o a platform we'll
lift it up like this but instead of having those straps and then the crane itself, we're
gonna have those straps and then the phone books, and then the crane. So the whole system
is gonna be relying on those phone books to stick together. It's the one page after the
other, after the other, for one thousand six hundred pages all the way through the phone
book, and the friction will probably hold this car up.
It's from Curry's Garage apparently. This is the bit where we set this experiment
up and look at the science behind why this should work. But if you want to click through
to the actual lift itself then this is the button you gotta click on.
So the science behind these phone books is always quite hotly debated. Everyone is debating
what is the correct science and what isn't, what we do know is that there are a few factors
involved in it so, when we've interwoven all these pages all the friction between just
one is easy to overcome, you get a little bit of friction there but not a lot, for sixteen
hundred pages the friction starts to build and build so the surface area is definitely
one of the things, that will contribute to the phone book achieving their goal today.
When we pull down in it, it will pull together, so when you pull down, this pulls together,
and that adds to the friction and the surface tension.
One last thing actually, it's something you can try at home, if you open a hard backed
book or even a paper backed book, that some of the pages will flip up with it as well,
and that's all to do with air pressure. So you flip a book open another page comes with
it so the air pressure between the two pages, will force those pages to come together.
So if one page wants to come away, it will also try dragging the next page and the next
page. It looks like this is the bit you guys have
been waiting for. We made sure all the parameters are just right, we made sure the balance is
just right, we got these clamps just right with these interwoven pages. It took us ages
but they're prefect as well. So if we could take it over the top and we'll get it hooked
up and we'll get this car on the phone books. And this definitely does take a car up because
we've seen it before. Ok here we got, lifting a car with phone books in what could be the
biggest live experiment that we've done just yet. I'm hoping that the phone books will
start to slide just that little bit and that all of the phone book pages, all the way through,
are gonna hold together as it starts getting lifted off the ground. Are we ready? Is everyone
ready? Mega live experiment, phone book friction, taken to the max, let's take it up.
The phone books are now taking the pressure, we got a whole car over one thousand kilograms
held up by clamps, a crane, and two phone books, sixteen hundred pages all woven together,
ladies and gents the science works.