Researchers explain why it's nearly impossible to separate two interleaved phonebooks
Wednesday, December 9, 2015 - 09:41
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org)—Many people are familiar with the friction enigma of two interleaved phonebooks, in which all of the pages of two phonebooks are overlapped, one by one, with the books' spines facing outward. Trying to separate the books by pulling on their spines is incredibly difficult due to the massive amount of friction between the pages. A Mythbusters episode showed that the interleaved phonebooks are strong enough to lift a car, and that nothing less than two military tanks can separate them (while tearing many of the pages).