The Brick Balancing Challenge

How far can you make a tower lean? Bricks optional. Lower-mass cuboids should work just as well.

Previous brick video: The Brick Double-Domino Effect Explained

Try to keep the comments spoiler free! But I do not mind calculations for how far a specific number of bricks will reach.

I will do a follow-on video eventually.

Support me on Patreon and help me make follow-on videos quicker.

CORRECTIONS
- None yet! Let me know if you spot any.

Music by Howard Carter
Design by Simon Wright

MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician

[Yakushii]

"Bonded over unusual ways to lay brick."

-Matt "Bricklayer" Parker

[unvergebeneid]

If you want to have 100 bricks of overhang, you'd need a bit more than 1.5*10^43 bricks. I hope to see that stack in a follow-up video.

[KaeYoss]

I managed it with just 3 bricks. They were Lego bricks.

[BrekMartin]

No matter how many bricks, the result is still Parker Stairs.

[dik]

My bet is on e, for no reason whatsoever.

[electromika]

If he fails to balance them, is it a Parker Brick?

[Djorgal]

As long as what you do is harmonious, you can do whatever you want!

[pezpro]

Great job at completing the challenge! However, I believe the only thing keeping the stop brick from falling is friction. But I still count it as a success!

[LuGoddess]

coming soon: Matt bonds with a toy store owner and discovers this is quite easy using lego bricks :-p

[AtkinsSJ]

Is this all shameless promotion for the upcoming 'Pallet of Bricks' coming soon to Mathsgear?

[EszesBalazs]

I always admire how far you are willing to go just to show us math in real life. Thank you :)

[mattfeeder]

I reckon the max is somewhere around e, likely the Parker Square version of e (named "Parker's e"), calculated to be approximately 2.69109901017.

[jansenonline]

LOL 'o no! I accidentally dropped my bricks in front of a high speed camera. Sowwy, I'll pay for thowes'. 😋

[TH-ibzz]

I like the part where he balanced the bricks.

[super_]

I like how he had a fail camera set up so he had to knock it over somehow so it didn't feel useless.

[pellaken]

spoiler: he dies in the end. - I dunno what movie/book/show that is a spoiler for, but it's a spoiler for *some*thing.

[achuth]

5:42 the moment Matt Parker should have realised that he parker squared a balanced bridge.
5:40 he gave it a go.
5:57 he let it go.
3:27 to 3:34 how to officially appreciate an unbalanced parker-brick bridge.

[dankdreamz]

Not your typical YouTube comments section.

[TheRealSaltyChips]

SPOILER WARNING!!
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There is no theoretical limit to how far the bricks can overhang! The distance a brick can theoretically be from the edge follows the harmonic series which is 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5 ... With one brick, it can theoretically balance 1/2 of a bricks length away, adding a second brick allows the bottom brick to be 1/3 away, and the brick above to be 1/2 of the way past the brick it is on. Continue this for numerous bricks and you have a lot of tiny fractions adding together! Since this is the harmonic series and adding consecutive fractions to infinity never converges to a number... There is no theoretical limit to how far you could balance a brick off the edge! I could go into more detail about the harmonic series, but there are other people who could explain it in simpler terms.

[mallig]

There's so much harmony in your series Matt ;)