We’re upping our game here at SMS Text News in quite spectacular manner over the next few months.
The first rather stimulating task we’re aiming to complete is the brainchild of regular Monday contributor, Ben Smith. At the Nokia WOMWorld meeting the other day we were discussing the Toughphone and I was describing how I took it to the top of the ski slope in Heavenly and did some rather aggressive stamping on it — the handset still worked perfectly afterwards.
Ben reckons we should run a Boeing 767 over it.
All 60 tons of it.
I agree.
He’s been in touch with a colleague. Armed with qualifying passports, it seems we might well be able to obtain permission to try running over a Toughphone with a 767. I don’t reeeeeeellly expect the phone to handle that at all well. I’d be perfectly content if the handset came out the other end completely flat. It isn’t, after all, every day that your average construction worker lets his phone get run over by a Jet.
We’ll keep you updated.
More from Toughphone at www.jcbphone.co.uk.
Unfortunately if this comes off it will ‘only’ be a 757 (probably 757-300), but it will weigh 60 tonnes so should do they job… 🙂 If it doesn’t I can always ask for a 2nd pass with a 767, but at 80 tonnes that seems excessive to start with.
More news as soon as I have it and the people at Stansted have stopped laughing at me…
Ben Smith’s last blog post..iPhone SDK and Enterprise features announced
Wicked!!! we want photos of what sounds like a fun day out!!
Can I give you my old Treo 750 to run over while you’re at it please? I’ll donate £50 to charity if I can see a video of it being rolled on by a Jumbo.
Hmmmm…couldn’t you do this much easier by running it over with your car?
Think about it: it’s all relevant to weight/tyre footprint.
So a 100,000kg plane with 10 massive tyres might exert the same force per square inch on the phone as a 1600kg car with 4 much smaller tyres. Think why 60-ton tanks roll on over wet ground while much lighter cars get stuck.
My car weights 1.6% of an empty 767. Is the tyre footprint a similarly small percentage? No idea. Similarly, a 100kg cyclist on a racing bike with tyres at 120psi would probably be exerting a large PSI (I believe a racing cyclist’s tyre footprint is smaller than a matchbox) – maybe more than a 767.
So, while running a mobile over with a f**k-off big plane might be a Good Day Out for the boys, is it good science? It’s way more sexy than using your nan’s Micra, but does it prove anything more?
Any jobbing aeronautical engineers out there can shed some light?
Must be Friday.
/m
@Steve: E-mail me at ben.smith@smstextnews.com with some contact details and I’ll see what I can do as/when.
@Mike: I have had some discussion about this – particularly that the weight of the plane is not evenly distributed between wheels – only about 10% of the weight is supported by the nose. So, with 8 wheels under the wings supporting ~ 58 tonnes (90% of 64 tonnes – actual unladen weight) we’ll be getting around 7 tonnes under each wheel, maybe more if the plane is loaded with cargo. That’s more than we can achieve with a standard road vehicle and I’m all out of tanks 🙂
Hmmm…thought it was heavier than that, but hey ho.
So 7 tonnes per wheel eh? that’s about 4 times the weight of my car….so unless the footprint of the 767 tyre is less than 4 times that of my car tyres, you’d get similar results.
Looking at my car’s tyres compaired to the monsters on the plane, I reckon it would be a close-run thing.
But then saying a JCB Toughphone can survive a pounding from…er…a Volvo Estate just isn’t quite as newsworthy, eh? (Even if I left the dog & 2.4 kids inside) 😉
These things are very important to get right.
….I plan to test the iPhone by seeing how many SMSTextNews annuals it can withstand….watch this space….
@Mike: Only if I could get the phone under all 4 of your car wheels simultaneously 🙂
Science is fun 🙂