I've got a whole bunch of these split rings, which are well, they're the key rings aren't they.
Let me just remind you what they look like, because you get these all over the place;
they've got a split in them, it allows you to insert a key there, but other uses as well.
What can you do with them? Well there's a very advanced bit of mathematics here called the
Hopf Fibration, look at this - how about making one of those with them? My goodness look at that!
Have you ever come across that before? So a friend of mine made one, and then I started them copying
it, and finding the information he sent me is full of heavy, heavy mathematics, which I couldn't cope
with, but it made me interested enough to make a copy of it anyway, so here's here's
the first attempt to make this extraordinary piece. I can make it a little more orderly by
putting a pen through the middle sometimes, to get it to see so you can see the the pattern;
and that's almost the limit, you can't do more than that actually, because
where the pen is there's a small air gap, but the next ring or pair of rings,
they come in pairs you'll see in a minute, they will fill it up and you can't do any
more. So let's start at the beginning of that one, just to show how simple it is to
put together. You start off with literally a pair of these like that, and they're actually
in the actual model like that, they're always together they're not dangling down,
they're held together, and you've got to put another pair through there, so let's have a look,
that's the next stage, which is a pair of these, so the top pair are interlinked
and the bottom pair are interlinked.
So those are linked and those are linked, that's very important. And then when they're hanging down
they're going to be bunched together like that, when they're actually in position. The next stage
would be three sets of those, there we are, this is one with three, all pairs, there's three pairs,
and again I'm going to bunch them together like that, and you're starting to see a sort
of swirling pattern appearing there, can you see the swirling pattern? Let me get it into focus...
The next stage will become a little more clear, because when you put four together, oh yes, well
is it six? I've forgotten, you're definitely getting a quite a nice little swirl here.
To make it a bit more visible I'll put a pen through it like that, you can definitely see
the swirling pattern. And you carry on up the scale, this one here is still not where I was at
beginning, there we are, there's lots more room there, there's plenty of room for a few more...
so when the last few go in and it's quite tough to get them to thread these in against
the springs, you finally get to the one which I showed at the beginning,
which was about the maximum you can get for this size of key ring; and that's that sat
there with a real swirly swirly pattern to it, it's closing up at the top there, never mind; so
it's very difficult to do this because it takes a huge amount of effort to open those rings and
close them, and pack them together like that so tightly, let's see if we can focus again..
and I've got to get it to swirl... there we are.
So there's something you can do with some of these...
But there are a couple of other easier things to do, that was really quite a tricky one,
and this is one of them; it was set by I think a Japanese person, you were asked
to see if you could get 12 of these rings balanced on a nail. There's the nail, I'll put it on the
saucer, and see how we balance... and the trick was you can't just stack them like that,
because that's an easy solution, anyone could do that. What you've got to do is make sure
that every one of the rings when they are in position are not touching the ground. It seems
impossible doesn't it? Well, here's the clue to it. This is a very clever idea - you just get
one ring like that, push the other through, and can you see there's a tiny little air gap there;
through the air gap you're going to push the nail, let's see if we can do this without too much fuss,
like that, like that, and there's the basic piece there we are...
So the point is when that's totally pulled down there, that bottom ring is not touching the base,
it's the actual nail head which is touching the base, and you really stack the rings on
top of them; couldn't be easier! Well, it's a little bit tricky because you actually want
to get the balance right, this is a balancing trick now. If i let that go it'll fall down so
I'm got to start putting a few of these key rings here on this side, onto here,
let's see if that first lot stacks up, yes it does.
So you get the idea, you go north, south, east, west, east, west, north, south, and eventually
you fill up the whole of the nail; you can't go more than about 12 because that reaches the top
of the nail point. I'll probably stop there i think, see if I can get that to balance,
no it hasn't, but I think you've got the idea. The most important thing is to start with that
configuration like that, and then you're away, because it's very easy there afterwards just to
put the nail down and start adding rings to it, a little bit off-centre, it's more of a balancing
act once you've done that, because you've got to get this thing to stay upright which it does,
and i think a total of about 12 of that size and nail can be done,
so there's something else to do with key rings. The last one is something I've only come across,
well I thought about a few years ago, it's using the key rings and using them
as if they were coins - there's a whole lot of coin tricks which involve having coins like
pennies or cents, doing various things. And instead of that you just use these key rings.
So this is the earliest one I came across when i was a 12 year old child,
I think it was, I was shown how to do this, which was take that and have it touching two,
take this one I have here so it is touching two, and take that out so it is touching
two. [makes a circle] Can you copy that? What I didn't notice was the grown up or my dad who
showed it to me, when you put it back again and set it up for me to have a go, has set
up the parallelogram with the thing pointing the other way, it's pointing that way now.
So when I started going, well, to the left you go, touching two, uh oh that's a nice pretty shape,
but of course it's the wrong way. What I should do, so I've got to reverse everything,
is take this piece out, touching two, and touching two - I've lost myself again !
This is what I did with the dad. I've got to go touching two, touching two, and touching
two [Tim makes a circle] So that is something else to do with key rings is treat them as coins,
they're much much lighter to carry around than coins, and do well I've got books with about
several hundred coin tricks you can do, making lines and all sorts of fun and games. But do them
with key rings, why not? Very versatile things these, so get yourself a bag and get making!