#HTE

How Much Weight Can a Shopping Cart Hold?

One of the lessons I remember well from ID school was delivered by then-professor Bruce Hannah. Hannah was discussing the intelligent implementation of materials, using the bicycle wheel as an example.

He pointed out that the wire spokes are relatively inexpensive and individually quite weak, such that anyone in the class could hold one and bend it in half. But you take a bunch of them and attach them to a hub within a circular frame, and suddenly you have something absurdly, and affordably, strong.

The following GIF wasn’t part of Hannah’s lecture, but consider how well the spokes and rim are doing their job here:

Another commonplace item that makes good use of wire is the classic shopping cart. Admittedly the underpinnings are actual tubes, but the design is still a fine example of exploiting the properties of economical materials to provide strength.

So how much weight do you think one can hold? Has anyone ever warned you not to let your children ride on the front of a shopping cart, as they might break it? These folks here decided to stack weights into one to see if they could make it fail, and the end number is pretty darn surprising:

I’d like to see how the plastic ones stand up.

Via The Awesomer

http://www.core77.com/posts/55076/How-Much-Weight-Can-a-Shopping-Cart-Hold