The Phone Book Myth
Posted by BrianApparently if you interweave the pages of two phone books together they are nearly impossible to pull apart. These two Dutch students won first place in a Mythbusters challenge demonstrating as much. Very cool experiment, but I think they should have been disqualified for referring to kilograms as units of force.
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March 24th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
[...] Flashpoint: The Phone Book Myth [...]
April 13th, 2008 at 4:11 am
I’m sure they were using the term “Kilograms” as short hand for “kg/m” (or whatever the equivalent of psi is). In America we DO say “pounds of force” when we really mean psi or foot pounds.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:49 am
Josh, I hope you realize that pounds are force.
psi is pressure.
kilograms are not force, but I think it’s easier for people to understand what sort of stress the phonebooks could handle when you express in something they weigh their own bodies with.