Boing Boing » ou http://boingboing.net Brain candy for Happy Mutants Wed, 19 Jun 2013 15:45:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 Tallest possible Lego tower height calculated http://boingboing.net/2012/12/04/tallest-possible-lego-tower-he.html http://boingboing.net/2012/12/04/tallest-possible-lego-tower-he.html#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:00:25 +0000 Cory Doctorow http://boingboing.net/?p=198130 More or Less decided to answer a year-old Reddit argument about how many Lego bricks can be vertically stacked before the bottom one collapses.]]>
The good folks on the most-excellent BBC Radio/Open University statistical literacy programme More or Less decided to answer a year-old Reddit argument about how many Lego bricks can be vertically stacked before the bottom one collapses.

They got the OU's Dr Ian Johnston to stress-test a 2X2 Lego in a hydraulic testing machine, increasing the pressure to some 4,000 Newtons, at which point the brick basically melted. Based on this, they calculated the maximum weight a 2X2 brick could bear, and thus the maximum height of a Lego tower:

The average maximum force the bricks can stand is 4,240N. That's equivalent to a mass of 432kg (950lbs). If you divide that by the mass of a single brick, which is 1.152g, then you get the grand total of bricks a single piece of Lego could support: 375,000.

So, 375,000 bricks towering 3.5km (2.17 miles) high is what it would take to break a Lego brick.

"That's taller than the highest mountain in Spain. It's significantly higher than Mount Olympus [tallest mountain in Greece], and it's the typical height at which people ski in the Alps," Ian Johnston says.

"So if the Greek gods wanted to build a new temple on Mount Olympus, and Mount Olympus wasn't available, they could just - but no more - do it with Lego bricks. As long as they don't jump up and down too much."

How tall can a Lego tower get?

More or Less: Opinion polling, Kevin Pietersen, and stacking Lego 30 Nov 2012 [MP3] ]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/12/04/tallest-possible-lego-tower-he.html/feed 71