Science Fair project help?

[Octillion]

nickfish03,

An easy way to measure the TORQUE (NOT TENSION! Tension is a force that tends to stretch something, while torque is rotational force. “Tension wrench” is just a horrible misnomer in lockpicking), may be to use a small spring scale attached to the end of a torque wrench. To apply torque on the plug, simply pull on the spring scale, and keep the spring scale oriented perpendicular to the torque wrench arm (at 90 degrees). In this configuration, the torque is approximately equal to the force on the scale multiplied by the distance between the center of the plug and the point where the spring scale is attached to the torque wrench.

Also, ignore what “What” said above. Although he was trying to be helpful, what he stated is completely wrong. Just because the plug is not moving, does not mean there is no torque or a way to measure it. In fact, you will certainly be measuring a force on the spring scale when you pull on it and the plug is fixed, and this force is directly proportional to the torque.

[What]

Also, ignore what “What” said above. Although he was trying to be helpful, what he stated is completely wrong. Just because the plug is not moving, does not mean there is no torque or a way to measure it. In fact, you will certainly be measuring a force on the spring scale when you pull on it and the plug is fixed, and this force is directly proportional to the torque.

you can measure the torque by having some device on the tension wrench, but the point of my statements was that you couldnt measure the force from the plug, as i had suggested and as Shrub agreed.

[EGOOT247]

You spoke of "real world connections."
If I were you, I would take advantage of this opportunity to educate the uninformed public about how lockpickers, most of the time, are not thieves. (Grrrrr... Mrs. S...)

You could talk about Locksport, maybe...
And locksmiths...
And maybe how the world has a false sense of security...

They're just ideas, but hey...

[nickfish03]

Thanks for the ideas so far, keep em comin (if you choose)

[sams choice]

you could use one solid wieght and a variable of them. For instance, attach wieght to the tension wrench while picking the lock. i imagine that too much wieght will make the lock unpickable and not enough will make it unpickable. From this i am sure you can find something. Man i wish when i was in school i could have done a project on lockpicking. That would have been fun.

[Treeson]

I'm sorry but I don't have any new ideas to contribute.

I just wanted to say that I wish you the best of luck and please post the experiment you end up doing and the results. I think it would help a lot of people especially if you had statistical evidence to back up your conclusions. If it's accurate, complete, and informational it would probably be added to the FAQ section.

Good luck,

Treeson

[mh]

TORQUE (NOT TENSION! Tension is a force that tends to stretch something, while torque is rotational force. “Tension wrench” is just a horrible misnomer in lockpicking)

For me as a native German speaker, "tension wrench" made sense until now, because I thought that mechanical tension is the same as mechanical stress, and what you want to create inside the lock can indeed be described as mechanical stress.

Now that I learned more about the language from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_%28physics%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tension_%28mechanics%29
I still think that tension can be rotational as well.
But I'm confused

nickfish03, how that's connected to catching fish, I can't see, though... Maybe to protecting the catch from burglars

[greyman]

There seems to be a bit of debate on whether you could measure the torque on the plug of a lock being picked from measurements taken purely on the plug and not on the device providing the torque.

At first glance this would seem impossible because the plug is bound by the pins not at the shear line and it would be very difficult to get something in between the plug and pins to measure the forces on them. However, a plug is a solid object and therefore subject to the laws of mechanics. These laws say that every force applied to a solid body results in some kind of elastic deformation, however small.

So what you need to do is find a way to measure very small deformations of the surface of the plug and study these deformations as varying amount of torque are applied. You could start with laser interferometry or perhaps piezo electric strain gauges. But you may need to invent a more sensitive technique.

Now that is a real science research project

[greyman]

By the way nickfish03, the information in my last post is provided at no charge to you However if you end up using any of the suggestions you have learned from this newsgroup, in the interests of professional integrity, you should reference them, e.g. by website and username of poster. Not citing your references is called copying or plagiarism and I know you do not want to do that.

[nickfish03]

Thank you for the luck treeson and I will post my findings, although it will take awhile, i won't be taking data for quite awhile, its in the next school year...but, I might do my own experiments during summer so we'll see. Don't worry greyman, I will make references when needed , mh im not sure if you were joking or what but the fishing thing was an example of what I had to do for my homework to find out ideas of my project

[mh]

Yes I was joking, found it funny that your mother

is saying that it needs something more like fishing

I fact I don't know much about school projects where you live, and esp. nothing about the requirements for that.
Some 20 years ago in Germany we built something which you could hit with a hammer to measure your strength in one year, then did computer programming sessions once or twice, and in one year we programmed a love-matching system Heidi didn't go to my school, otherwise I might have been tempted to manipulate that a little bit

On your project, I guess that showing the concept of a pick gun might be even more suitable, because of its relation to what you have learned (or will learn?) about 'momentum' and 'elastic collisions'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum

Cheers,
mh

[rake]

For cheap get a fish scale. But note this telling every little kid in school you pick locks wait until they come up with somethin missing. The only one they remember is you. You might get a black eye out of the blue.