Recently, a physics teacher in Yunnan Province, Southwest China, performed a brick splitting demonstration in class, which has attracted a lot of attention.
In the video, the teacher picks up a cement brick, puts it on the edge of the table, and quickly splits it with his palm, and the brick breaks.
It seems that the teacher didn't use much force to break the brick, and as some students have verified, the brick is so strong that they couldn't have broken it themselves.
Full video here:
The teacher's name is Zhang Hui, a physics teacher at Mile No. 4 Middle School in Honghe.
After the experiment, he explained, "Splitting the bricks was an introduction to the new lesson of the day, and I tried twice, the first time intentionally failed! and the second time it split."
"Actually the important technique was that the second time I warped one end of the brick."
Zhang Hui says this can be explained by inertia, or by the momentum theorem.
Zhang Hui further explains, "Raise one end up so that the bricks are at an angle to the table and smash your hand down on it. It wasn't really my hand that split it, it was the table that broke the brick." So, you can easily split the brick by yourself.
Zhang Hui said that we learn to observe the phenomena in our daily lives and combine it with our knowledge of physics.
"In fact, the main thing this class teaches students is that after we see many things, we should think scientifically and analyze them rationally, instead of to worship blindly!"
After the video was uploaded online, netizens praised this Zhang teacher, saying, "Knowledge is power!"