Have you ever looked at something and wondered how the heck is it possible? Lots of things puzzle our brains and cause us to stop and think about how they were accomplished. Whether it’s through means of magic tricks, optical illusions, or even alien intelligence, the explanation is often much more simple than originally thought to be. The seemingly impossible nail through wood trick falls under this optical illusion/puzzle-type of conundrum.
If you’ve never seen the visually confusing puzzle before it features a nail which appears trapped within a block of solid wood. The piece lacks any drill holes and there is no physical way that the nail could have been hammered through the wood. The question it makes us ask ourselves is this; how did the nail get there?!
You no longer have to wonder because it’s been covered by Steve Ramsey on his YouTube channel where he shows exactly how it’s done. He gives us a comprehensive behind the scenes glimpse at the entire process from start to finish and it’s quite awesome.
He begins with a solid block of pine wood and cuts three evenly spaced slots halfway down into one side of it. After heating up a large pot of water to a boil, the wood is placed in it to simmer for about 10 minutes and then removed. Immediately after that the block is transferred to a wood clamp where it’s tightly compressed and sits for two days.
The force from the clamp causes the boiled portion of the wood to warp and mushes it down enough for a nail to be easily inserted through the inner slot pieces. Once the nail is in place the wood is boiled yet again for about ten minutes. The hot water causes it to expand back into it’s normal shape, and in the process the nail becomes entrapped within the sides of the block.
Simple science can explain the whole “trickery” at work here as the heating and cooling of the wood caused it to expand and contract. That, in conjunction with a little extra force from the clamp, allowed just enough room to insert the nail through the middle slots, while bypassing the end portion. It’s pretty cool that something so seemingly impossible turns out to actually be very possible indeed!
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