Whats up with the Indian rope trick and the bed of nails?
Dear Cecil: I would like to know two answers. First, I would like to know how those swamis lie on a bed of nails, and I would also like to know how they do that weird rope trick thing. — Anonymous Why no name, sport? Taking a little time out from mailing anthrax letters? No need to be shy, though. While the bed-of-nails trick may have struck the rubes as an impenetrable mystery a hundred years ago, today we live in the age of science. Not only do we understand how Eastern mystics did this stunt, college professors routinely use it to wake up the jocks in Physics 101. The trick, when you think about it, is obvious. You’d impale yourself if you put all your weight on a single nail, but it’s a different story when your weight is spread across hundreds. What you’ve got here is a demonstration of pressure as force per unit of area. According to one calculation, a 70-kilogram individual lying on a grid of nails spaced at 2.5-centimeter intervals would exert a downward force of only 40 grams
