Cardboard Crane Boom Crush Test
Girl’s Summer Camp
By Corporal Willy, June 12th, 2011
Intent:
The Girl’s Summer Camp will be conducted at the Northwest Career Technical Academy high school this year in Las Vegas, Nevada. We are trying to get more young girls interested in engineering, architecture and other technical careers. The sole purpose of this “camp” is to give the young girls some practical “hands on” projects that might spark their interests. This one portion of the three day event is to allow them to do the destructive testing of my cardboard built structures and to record all data generated.
Subject Item:
Made from Cardboard in the shape of a Crane’s Boom, it has a total length of 8 feet 2 ½ inches or 2.5019 Meters. There are three main sections all glued together with Elmer’s Wood Glue. The total weight is 985 grams 2.1716 lbs. total. (26.2667 Taels Japanese and 692.7270 Lots Russian)
Object of Test:
To subject the Cardboard Crane Boom to enough pressure so it will be permanently destroyed or rendered useless for its intended purpose. Every effort has been made to conduct the test with as much precision and proper engineering principals as possible. Only handmade items were used for this test. The force applied to the boom will be from the weight of water and the pails needed to hold it. I gallon of water equals 8.333 Pounds per gallon or 3.7798 Kilograms or 100.7979 Taels Japanese or 2,658.3283 Lots Russian. Each of the three different size plastic pails with tops used to hold the water for the test equals the corresponding weight of:
Largest Pail Size: 1589 grams; 3.5031 pounds; 42.3733 Taels Japanese; 1,117.5057 Lots Russian.
Medium Pail Size: 1419 grams; 3.1284 pounds; 37.8400 Taels Japanese; 997.9488 Lots Russian.
Small Pail Size: 1382 grams; 3.0468 pounds; 0.1143 Taels Japanese; 971.9276 Lots Russian.
Thanks to ESB Consultancy for the help with the conversions for this international article of
interest. http://www.esbcalc.com/
Test Rig:
This testing platform has a two to one advantage. For each unit of force applied to the long lever side of the pivot or pail side, there will be two units of force imposed on the Cardboard Crane Boom side.
These pictures are provided to show how it will be set up for the test conducted on the high school premises.
Subject of Test:
The Cardboard Crane Boom was made out of various empty cardboard strips that were cut up, sized and glued together using Elmer’s Wood Glue. It represents many hours of work which the young girls will destroy so I can get the compression strength data from the test. The Cardboard Crane Boom is shown to you in the pictures below.
At another time I had constructed a very small four legged stool which I brought to the Foothills high school here in Las Vegas, to let them test it for me. It weighed only slightly more than 11 ounces but held up a surprising 150 pounds of weight for 22 seconds. That stool was only 0.3118 Kilograms or 0.6875 Pounds. Because of the international interest in school science projects like this, I have strived to come up with innovative and yet exciting things to do with the cheapest of materials so expenses would be as little as possible for the schools. I am working on details now to have cooperation and collaboration with schools outside of the USA to work on a Martian, Luna or Orbiting Space Colony in which various schools will be responsible for different parts of the base.
Some very surprising results are expected but because of the materials used it can also be disappointing as well. I am hopeful that the young future lady engineers might be thrilled to do a test of importance like this and then spark an interest in pursuing technical careers. I’m also hopeful that educators around the world and school administrators will follow this article and wait for the results to be published worldwide so that similar things can be done in schools around the world. Stay tuned more to come. Let’s get some guesses going as to how much it will resist.
