Can a Toilet Paper Tube Support Your Weight? Make It Your Own Very Short (≤ 1 day) Here's a fun project idea to learn about compression forces. For this experiment you'll need some empty toilet paper tubes, masking tape, sand (or table salt), pebbles (or marbles), a funnel, a cardboard box, and a sturdy chair to help you balance while testing the column. Seal one end of the tube with masking tape. Use the funnel to fill the tube with sand (or salt). Seal the other end with tape. Place the tube on end inside the paper box. Place the chair with its back to the box and hold the chair for balance. Place one foot on top of the tube and gradually shift more and more of your weight to that leg. Does the tube support your weight? What happens if you fill the tube with something with larger particles, like pebbles or marbles? Will a single large column or several smaller columns support more weight? Can a Toilet Paper Tube Support Your Weight?. Share your story with Science Buddies!

I Did This Project! Last edit date: 2014-06-30 News Feed on This Topic Note: A computerized matching algorithm suggests the above articles. It's not as smart as you are, and it may occasionally give humorous, ridiculous, or even annoying results! Learn more about the News Feed The Ask an Expert Forum is intended to be a place where students can go to find answers to science questions that they have been unable to find using other resources. If you have specific questions about your science fair project or science fair, our team of volunteer scientists can help. Our Experts won't do the work for you, but they will make suggestions, offer guidance, and help you troubleshoot. Science Fair Project Guide Other Ideas Like This Civil Engineering Project Ideas If you like this project, you might enjoy exploring these related careers: If you turned on a faucet, used a bathroom, or visited a public space (like a road, a building, or a bridge) today, then you've used or visited a project that civil engineers helped to design and build.

Civil engineers work to improve travel and commerce, provide people with safe drinking water and sanitation, and protect communities from earthquakes and floods. This important and ancient work is combined with a desire to make structures that are as beautiful and environmentally sound, as they are functional and cost-effective. Mechanical engineers are part of your everyday life, designing the spoon you used to eat your breakfast, your breakfast's packaging, the flip-top cap on your toothpaste tube, the zipper on your jacket, the car, bike, or bus you took to school, the chair you sat in, the door handle you grasped and the hinges it opened on, and the ballpoint pen you used to take your test. Small Puppies Sale ChicagoVirtually every object that you see around you has passed through the hands of a mechanical engineer. Repairing A Crack In Plastic Shower Tray

Consequently, their skills are in demand to design millions of different products in almost every type of industry. Do you dream of building big? Civil engineering technicians help build some of the largest structures in the world—from buildings, bridges, and dams to highways, airfields, and wastewater treatment facilities. Many of these construction projects are "public works," meaning they strengthen and benefit a community, state, or the nation.Grape 5s T Shirt Looking for more science fun? Try one of our science activities for quick, anytime science explorations. The perfect thing to liven up a rainy day, school vacation, or moment of boredom.Close: I already like TwistedSifterI clawed my way into the new 20-pack of toilet paper, pulled out a roll, popped it into the vintage (pat. pending 1931) Scott Paper holder on the bathroom wall. Then an odd thing happened: The new roll wobbled and fell out.

This Scott paper holder was firmly affixed to the wainscot in the second-floor bathroom when we moved in 25 or so years ago. Judging from its many layers of chipped paint, it had been there for some time, maybe even since 1931, when Scott Paper, a local Philadelphia company, was making such holders to popularize their newfangled rolls, so much handier than old-fashioned single sheets. For 80 years, more or less, it had been exactly the right size to hold a 1,000-sheet roll of Scott toilet paper.Had I bought a 20-pack of dollhouse-size by mistake? Or was this little roll a freak? Maybe its DNA had suffered a spontaneous mutation thanks to renegade PCBs in the 20-pack's polyvinyl bag? No. I didn't even want to think about it. Like most American consumers, I'm inured to the underhanded antics of the businesses that supply my needs. I'm used to buying bigger cornflakes boxes that hold paradoxically fewer cornflakes. Half-gallon containers of ice cream that, overnight, shrunk down to quart-and-a-half size.

Half-gallon containers of Tropicana O.J. suddenly relabeled to contain 59 ounces instead of 64.I never thought they'd shrink the toilet paper. As my little sister Kathy put it, "Is nothing sacred??" Joey Mooring, senior manager for global marketing and brand communications at Kimberly-Clark, which took over the Scott brand name in 1995, after Chainsaw Al Dunlap dismembered Scott Paper and laid off a third of its work force, forwarded a prepared statement that confirmed my darkest suspicions. "In 2010, as a way to help offset the rising costs of the raw materials required to make toilet paper, and to avoid implementing a price increase, many of the major toilet paper brands made changes in the sheet size of their toilet paper products. "The Scott 1000 toilet paper brand was the last brand to make such a change.However, at the same time we made significant enhancements to the brand's toilet paper product, providing a softer and 10% stronger Scott 1000 brand toilet paper product that still delivers to consumers 1,000 sheets on a roll."

Indeed it does--it's just that each of those thousand sheets is now 4/10ths of an inch narrower. It isn't the first time the Scott 1000 brand sheet size has been downsized. (So far, nobody seems to be euphemizing the process as "right-sizing," so there's at least that much to be thankful for.) The deciders at Kimberly-Clark Corp. may have felt that narrowing the sheets on the Scott 100 brand was their only viable choice since they'd already made each sheet shorter--twice. In 2006, Scott released a "Now Improved!" version of its 1000-sheet roll with a "new soft-textured pattern"--and sheets cut down to 3.7 inches long from 4.1 inches. The whole shrinkage process first began in 1999 when Kimberly-Clark cut Scott's original 4.5-inch-by-4.5 inch square sheet to 4.5 inches by 4.1 inches. Other major brands--Quilted Northern, Angel Soft, Charmin Ultra Soft, Cottonelle--reduced sheet count as well as sheet size last year. But, due to the Scott 1000 name, reducing the number of sheets per roll was not a viable option.

(Even Don Draper would have a tough time making "New Improved Slimmer Scott 1000 Brand Toilet Paper--Now with 100 Fewer Sheets!" sound magical.) So there you have it: The new sheet size is 4.1 inches wide by 3.7 inches long. What is it, exactly, that's so disheartening about this? It's not that our 1931 Scott toilet paper holder has been rendered useless. And it's not just the idea that you're getting less toilet paper for the same price, or even the maybe-they-won't-notice sneakiness of it. I probably would not have noticed if the new 4.1-inch-wide roll hadn't tumbled out of the made-for-a-four-and-a-half-inch-roll holder. And Joey Mooring says Kimberly-Clark market-tested the narrower rolls among the general population and with loyal Scott consumers, and found no fierce objections. Still, the whole episode seems like a textbook example of misapplication of energy, intelligence and ingenuity American ingenuity used to be famous. We were always coming up with better mousetraps and, just as Emerson predicted, the world was beating a path to our door.