Is Your Toilet Paper Strong?
Problem: How much weight can an average piece of toilet paper hold before breaking?
Materials: BB’s, toilet paper, weight scale, two heavy blocks of wood
Hypothesis: It is thought that the average piece of toilet paper will be fairly strong for its size. It is
thought that approximately 2 pounds of weight will fit on an average piece of toilet paper before it tears.
Procedure:
1. Tear off a piece of toilet paper.
2. Place the toilet paper on books, with heavy blocks of wood on each side, so that the paper is hanging
above a table.
3. Begin putting BB’s on the toilet paper until it tears.
4. Record the number of BB’s that were held in the data chart.
5. Repeat the above steps nine more times.
6. Find the average number of BB’s that were held by the toilet paper.
7. Place that number of BB’s on the weight scale and record the weight.
8. Record the weight of the BB’s on the data page.
Data:
Trial 1
23
Trial 2
27
Trial 3
23
Trial 4
24
Trial 5
26
Trial 6
25
Trial 7
27
Trial 8
24
Trial 9
26
Trial 10
25
AVG
25
Weight of this number of BB’s = 1.1 pounds.
Results:
The number of BB’s that caused the toilet paper to tear was 25. This amount of BB’s weighed about
1.1 pounds. This was less that the number of BB’s it was thought would cause the paper to tear. The
hypothesis was incorrect, and the weight held by the toilet paper was less than what was thought. This
means that toilet paper is not as strong as we thought it would be.