Monday, February 16, 2009

Bed of nails: gone wrong!

The classic bed of nails demonstration (with cinder block burst) can sometimes end badly. My friend and Skeptical Teacher, Matt, does the bed of nails often enough to experience bad consequences from time to time.

Here's one that went bad two ways. Can you identify the two unfortunate events and which one was more regrettable? (The "good stuff" hits at 5:20ish.)



I hasten to add that neither bad result was really Matt's fault. But I'm guessing each one represented a learning experience for him. And teachers appreciate nothing so much as learning.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha, ha, they showed this at the demo night at the AAPT meeting. Thanks for linking to it here!

Dean Baird said...

The bed of nails demo never gets old. At this point, you could probably create a robust channel on YouTube dedicated to that single demo.