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Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Fun in General Scientists Calculate Highest Possible Lego Brick Tower Height, Mega Bloks Rightfully Ignored
Posted by David Mendez on Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 5:51 PM
(Well, we can assume Mega Bloks were ignored in the study, solely because they're just a less interesting alternative to Legos. Sorry, Mega Bloks.)
According to tech site BoingBoing, the folks over at British radio show "More or Less" wrangled a scientist from Open University—which is actually a thing, despite the fact that the name sounds like they have lower enrollment standards than ASU—to calculate how tall one could build a tower composed of 2x2 Lego bricks.
To find this out, they used a hydraulic testing machine to see how much force a Lego brick could stand before breaking, applying more than 4,000 Newtons of force before the brick collapsed. From there, they calculated how much weight a single brick could hold before being overtaken by stress, then figured out how many bricks could stack atop one another using that result.
And from what they found, apparently one could stack 2x2 Lego bricks 'til they reached 2.17 miles into the sky—or as Open University's Ian Johnston put it, "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."
As if the gods would be concerned with such decorum. Silly Brit.
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