Hi I am Jared. welcome to FunScienceDemos.
You know we use science and technology to solve problems,
and today we are going to take a look at a problem.
Our friend Norbert has to cross this river How can he do that?
Well let us take a look and see what would happen if he tries to jump across our river.
Are you ready Norbert? I think he is ready.
Let us see what he can do. He is gathering up speed...
and it did not work so well.
But I think we can use science and technology to help Norbert with this problem.
So how do you think we can get Norbert from one side to the other?
I think we can design and build something, and scientists call that -
when you design and build something - engineering.
So what do you think we can design and build that will get Norbert from here to there?
I am thinking that we can build and design a bridge.
Now it may not work the first time and we want to
keep Norbert dry, so that means we might have to redesign and rebuild, but
that is all a part of engineering.
Now, to build our bridge we are going to use ordinary paper.
Let us see what happens when I put this piece of paper over our river.
It looks like it is going to stay, but what will happen if I put Norbert on the bridge?
It is not strong enough.
So I am going to have to redesign, and do something to this paper.
I am going to have to change this paper to make it stronger.
We know that folding a piece of paper actually makes it stronger, so we also
want to keep Norbert safe, and we want to test our bridge that we make, and redesign and make
again, and to keep Norbert safe we are going to use pennies instead of Norbert.
So we are going to start with two folds.
I am going to fold each long side of the paper to the center.
Here we go!
One fold, two folds, and now let us see and test to see if this bridge became any stronger, so
we are ready to test our first bridge.
Now, we set our bridge up so that it is about
an inch or a few centimeters onto each book, and we have actually folded the front
edge of our bridge down so you can see the pennies that we add.
Each penny is about two and a half grams - that is going to help us test how strong our bridge is.
So now we are ready to add pennies.
We are going to stop when our bridges is not straight across anymore.
Here we go - one penny at a time:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ,9
See what is happening to our bridge 10, 11, 12
13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20,
21, 22, 23, 24, and our bridge collapsed
24 pennies but still pretty amazing
considering this piece of paper could not even hold one penny when it was not folded.
So I think it is time to redesign our original build.
Let us see if we can make it stronger. if one piece of paper
could hold 24 pennies, I wonder what two pieces of paper could hold.
How do we figure that out? We have to test our idea.
Let us put two pieces of paper together, set them up on our bridge and start dropping
pennies. so we folded down the front edge of our bridge so you can see how many pennies
we put on, and remember we have two pieces of paper.
So how many pennies do you think this bridge will hold?
Do you think it will hold less than 24 pennies,
about the same amount, or do you think it will hold a lot more than twenty four pennies?
The only way to find out is to test our idea. Here we go!
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20,
21, 22, 23, 24, we reached our 24 point.
It looks like it is holding 24. let us see how many it will hold now if we keep going
25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30,
31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40
41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50
51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60
61, 62, 63, I think I am going to need some more pennies
64, 65, 66, 67, 68
68 pennies think about that!
Look at this. our bridge held 68 pennies! Now, remember our one sheet of paper held
24 pennies, and you would think that if I added two pieces of paper that would
double the 24 and make it 48.
But this one held over twice as many pennies.
I can make my bridge stronger by adding another piece of paper.
24 pennies with one piece of paper, 68 pennies with two pieces of paper.
Now that see how many pennies we can get on three pieces of paper for our bridge.
(Counting....)
(Counting...)
(Counting...)130 pennies. do you think Norbert will be safe on that kind of bridge?
So before we test Norbert on our bridge, let us stop and think about what we did.
we folded a piece of paper and we only used one type of fold.
Do you think there are other types of folds we could use to test how strong paper is?
I really think there are. Take a look at this.
We could do lots of different folds to make
our papers stronger, and in fact scientists use this simple design in things all around us.
Things like cardboard, things like plywood, let us take a closer look at these
and see the same design in plywood and cardboard.
Take a look at this piece of plywood. now keep in mind, engineers use plywood
to build all kinds of things like houses, but look at the design in this plywood.
They used layers of wood to make our plywood stronger just like
we use layers of paper.
They used five layers we used three. Can you imagine how
strong our bridge would be if we used five layers of wood? making it really strong.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5
So plywood used layers to make it stronger. cardboard actually uses this
design to make it stronger.
Take a look at the side view of this cardboard.
Can you see the folds sandwiched in the cardboard?
Up and down up and down up and down.
Look at the design and a simple piece of cardboard.
all of those little folds actually make this cardboard stronger.
I think it is time to test our bridge and see if we can keep Norbert dry.
Are you ready Norbert? here we go.
It looks like it is working.
It took a lot of testing and redesigning, but that is all a part of
engineering. if you want to learn more about building, designing, and engineering,
check out our links in the video description.
Science is so cool, right Norbert?
Right!
Thanks for watching!