Editing Bed Of Nails (section)

==Why This Works==


When we had the single volunteer stand on a single paper cup, it was crushed. This is because all of their weight is on the single cup, which is not able to support them. However, the volunteer is able to stand on several cups, because their weight is spread out over all of them. This is the idea behind '''''Pressure''''': Pressure is when you take a force, such as someone's weight, and divide it over an area. If the amount of force is constant, then you can decrease the pressure by increasing the area. This is why several of the cups can support a person, with each one taking a fraction of the weight!

This works just as well with the Bed and Blanket of Nails. Each nail in the bed will take a small fraction of the person's weight, so each nail has a low amount of pressure on it. The amount of pressure on each of these nails doesn't increase much when we add the blanket of nails on top, or even with the cinder block! When we smash the cinder block, the force from smashing it is spread out over the nails, and results in a very small change in pressure for each. This keeps the presenter on the bed safe from harm. This would be very different if, instead of the several hundred nails we have in our Bed of Nails, it was only a dozen nails, or even just one. By increasing the number of nails, and therefore increasing the area to spread the force across, we decrease the amount of pressure on each "point", and the presenter is safe from harm.