Conclusions and Closure

 When I began this study, I wanted to see if two phone books, when woven together, would become impossible to separate. After my research, I found that it is in fact possible to separate the two tomes. Unfortunately, no one I know has access to a tank to test with. This presents an interesting dilemma. The basis of this study was to determine if it's impossible to separate the books, but I now know that it isn't. What remains true is that it is impossible for me to separate them. As I stated above, most people have no way of creating the 8000+ pounds of force required to pull the books apart. I have decided that for the purposes of this blog and my sanity, I will maintain that the books are impossible for any single human to pull apart.

Yeah, good luck with that.
groups.physics.umn. ND. 10/24/12

Science Shares it's Secrets



Screen Grab From Mythbusters Episode 106



  So what makes these books so hard to pull apart anyway? The obvious answer is friction. Friction is created by the space between the materials that make up everything. The smaller the spaces, the smoother the object. The fingerprints on the front of human hands are used to create friction and allow us to pick things up, while ice has smaller impossible to see grooves, that give it a relatively smooth feeling and appearance. According to the Physics Hypertextbook, this can be expressed F=u*N, where u is the coefficient of friction, and N is weight. The weight and coefficient may be small, but at four hundred pages begins to add up. One of the Mythbusters however, proposes a slightly different theory. Jamie proposes that, "There may be more going on here than just page on page. I think it has something to do with the pages being stacked and the weight that they put on each other, as well as there may be some sort of finger puzzle thing where the harder you pull the more it grabs." In other words, The force of friction may be stronger not from the number of pages, but from the pressure created by pulling the books apart, similar to Chinese handcuffs. 

• "Friction." The Physics Hypertextbook. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.  
• "Phonebook Friction." Mythbusters. Discovery Channel. Sept 10, 2008.

Fact, or F(r)iction

 Last week was fairly slow at work. In fact, it was so slow that I had time to test the theory proposed in the video by Timacious. I followed advice proposed by an article on polwig.com, and only interlocked half the phone books together. While I lacked the ropes to grab and a gage to measure the force, my co-worker and I were unable to separate the yellow paged tomes.

http://community.discovery.com 9-11-08. 10-22-12

 The Mythbusters attempted to pull their books apart with two people as well, but quickly abandoned this approach. They instead used two teams of five on opposite ends, and when this didn't work, they tried all ten on one side, with the other end anchored. They then tried cars, and when that didn't work, they moved to two tanks. The tanks made short work of the phone books, but their scale showed that it took over 8,000 pounds to do it; that's not even combined weight of the cars used earlier in the episode.

• "Discovery Mythbusters - The Phone Book Myth." YouTube.com. Timacious. Nov 29, 2007. Oct 17, 2012
• "Phonebook Friction." Mythbusters. Discovery Channel. Sept 10, 2008.
• "Phone Book Friction." polwig.com. Kids. 3-24-10. 10-22-12

Origins?

 The root of this physics phenomenon are hazy at best. While the Mythbusters appear to have popularized this urban legend, the origin appears to be from another source. At the start of the episode, Adam and Jamie cite this video. Posted in late 2007 as a contest entry, It seems to be the earliest manifestation of the myth. The processes seems simple enough; by interweaving pages of two phone books one at a time, it creates a single inseparable entity. The strength of the cars used in "Timacious"'s video may not have been enough to separate the books, but the Mythbusters have been know for doing everything it takes to prove that something can be done, often to the point of overkill. In the next post, I'll look at what happened when the Mythbusters took their crack at it, as well as share my own experience with this urban legend.

    



http://polwig.com/kids/phone-book-friction/. ND. Oct 17, 2012

• "Discovery Mythbusters - The Phone Book Myth." YouTube.com. Timacious. Nov 29, 2007. Oct 17, 2012
• "Phonebook Friction." Mythbusters. Discovery Channel. Sept 10, 2008.

Two Phone Books...

yellow.goflo.com ND 10/15/2012

The scout shop had just emptied of customers when the phone rang. It was a representative from Yellow Pages, calling to see if our shop had received a set of phone books. Now aware of them resting on the floor behind the counter, I responded with a "yes," and set our new books on the glass display case. As I hung up the phone, my co-worker Patrick asked if I had ever tried to lace two phone books together. I replied that I had not, to which he informed me of an episode of Mythbusters where they had done this very thing. Apparently, if you lace two phone books together, one page at a time, the friction created prevents them from being separated. Patrick could not remember how this episode concluded, but recalled that they had a game of tug-o-war with the books. If I had to guess, I would believe it is possible to pull them apart, but not with only two people tugging on it. With two phone books now gathering dust in the back room, I have taken it upon myself to come to a decision on the possibility of separating two interwoven phone books.