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Toy Blocks And Rotational Physics, Gabriele U. Varieschi, Isabel R. Jully
Toy Blocks And Rotational Physics, Gabriele U. Varieschi, Isabel R. Jully
Gabriele Varieschi
Have you ever observed a child playing with toy blocks? A favorite game is to build towers and then make them topple like falling trees. To the eye of a trained physicist this should immediately look like an example of the physics of “falling chimneys,” when tall structures bend and break in mid-air while falling to the ground. The game played with toy blocks can actually reproduce well what is usually seen in photographs of falling towers, such as the one that appeared on the cover of the September 1976 issue of The Physics Teacher.1 In this paper we describe …
Toy Models For The Falling Chimney, Gabriele U. Varieschi, Kaoru Kamiya
Toy Models For The Falling Chimney, Gabriele U. Varieschi, Kaoru Kamiya
Gabriele Varieschi
In this paper we review the theory of the ‘‘falling chimney,’’ which deals with the breaking in mid-air of tall structures when they fall to the ground. We show that these ruptures can be caused by either shear forces typically developing near the base, or by the bending of the structure which is caused primarily by the internal bending moment. In the latter case the breaking is more likely to occur between one-third and one-half of the height of the chimney. Small scale toy models are used to reproduce the dynamics of the falling chimney. By examining photos taken during …