Then again,

“The only thing the tester at Nintendojo could do to break the strap was intentionally rip it out of the Wiimote using both hands.”

Doesn’t exactly make me feel better? Do they mean the WiiMote in one hand and the strap in the other just pulling them apart? Doesn’t seem like that would put many pounds of pressure on it.

Yeah I think Blake and I both read that part. We’re just saying if you wanted to the test the maximum limits of the Wiimote strap using such a scientific and methodical method as the addition of weights slowly, why not actually do it in a manner that would actually test the Wiimote strap in the manner that it is actually used.

But good point, I guess Raj wasn’t trying to test the maximum sudden strength of the strap.

“playing and “accidentally” letting the Wiimote go. Even when the user tried to purposely cause the strap to break off by letting the Wiimote go, the strap stayed intact”

This would surely create a sudden force, and definately one that is likely to happen during gameplay, would it not?

When they test the integrity of materials in compression or elasticity tests, they are testing for something very key.

They don’t increase the PSI or pascals at a fixed rate, but rather they wish for the beam or test piece to change length at a fixed rate. So the test machines (Q-test machines) used are constantly monitoring how much the piece has stretched or shrunk and adjusts how much force it applies to ensure that is stretches or shrinks at a certain rate.

Thus you can plot a graph of how much the piece deformed (the percentage between the total length and the original length), and the force that is required to keep this deformation. The result is a stress-strain graph, and you can see the strengths and pros and cons of the materials. For instance, a lot of plastics will stretch a bunch before stretching, and the process of stretching (called plastic deformation, and thus we get the name “plastic”) gives the material additional strengths. However, other plastics, such as lexan or acrylics will simply shatter.

This is really cool how I know this stuff because of my materials class. It is weird though, because I never expected to go into an indepth conversation about it.

And the tests for compression/tension tests (which are called elasticity tests) are fairly similar, with one pulling and the other pushing.

Have at it Raj!

Bingo! Take an anecdotal fishing example. The line breaks more often when the fish make an unexpected run rather than when he’s putting up a consistent fight to the boat.

I’ve pulled up 60 lb waterlogged pieces of wood from the lake bottom on 25lb test line before. Slow and steady isn’t exactly the best indicator of load bearing capactiy.

Then again, look at how they test concrete integrity. They stick columns in the machine can applies extreme PSI’s but always over a slowly increasing rate. I wonder what would happen if the machine went from 0 to XXXXXX PSI over a fraction of a second rather than over minutes at a time. Maybe they conduct separate tests for elasticity! I am no scientist!

You should test the Wiimote strap by holding a weight up so that the strap is loose, and then dropping the weight and seeing if the strap can hold the weight.

The reason why this is the case is because the strap is going to slowly stretch (and gaining what is called ‘elastic’ strength), rather than snap which comes from overloading the strength of the strap immediately (as opposed to slowly).

This is all from my experience from my mechanics of materials class though.