36 pounds on 2x2 pillar .. at least

Having done some googling and not finding much on the strength of Lego I decided I would so some testing myself. I built two thick square lego platforms and put 2x2 pillars in each corner 22 bricks tall. Then I started piling heavy stuff on top. I did this in my kitchen (sorry no pictures) so I used heavy stuff that was around the house. I started with some dumbell weights. Somewhat surprised that didn't collapse the pillars, I added a big box of cat food. Nothing. I added several five pound bags of sugar (we bake a lot). Nothing. Big Sams Club plastic container of kitty litter. Nothing. I had 144 pounds of weight on four 2x2 pillars. Each pillar was holding 36 pounds. At this point we started getting worried that if the pillars did fail the Lego pieces would be shot away at a high velocity and break something. How much could they have held? I don't know, I'm still very curious.

10 feet 4 inches

My eleven year old son, Ryan, after helping me on the other towers decided to do one himself. This one is 10 feet 4 inches tall and is a very elegent design. The tower is the same from base to top and is a simple lego square cylinder using six 2x4 bricks per layer (every other layer was made of two 1x4 bricks next to each other). The tower has 326 layers using about 3000 pieces and weighs about 12 pounds. The base is solid bricks and is seven layers tall with each layer just bigger than the layer above.

Even though the tower is very slender the solidness of this cylinder design cannot be denied. I am thinking that perhaps taller towers could be made of four of these towers as the corner pillars with each connected every few feet by big square frames. That would make it balance much better at tall heights. One possible drawback of the design is that if it collapses the falling pieces could be quite large and heavy.

More pictures 17 feet 11 inches

Here is a picture of the top of the tower and one of me standing on the top of a six foot ladder.

Based on the weights we measured during the inventory process, this tower weighs about 30.3 lbs. This translates into only 3.4 lbs per pillar (for the bottom set of pillars). It used about 13,000 bricks, about 3/4 of the inventory.

17 feet 11 inches

Continuing on the success of the last tower, I figured I could scale it up and make a taller tower. I'm still using pillars made up of 2x2 blocks but this time with nine pillars instead of four. Each pillar is 19 bricks tall and the frames are two bricks tall and made up of 2x4 and 2x6. Since I didn't have enough 2x2 or 2x4, sometimes I substituted two 1x2 next to each other for a 2x2 in the pillars and two 1x4 next to each other intead of a 2x4 in the frames. This tower uses 28 frames and 27 sets of pillars. All together it was 569 bricks tall. Each frame was made up of 96 2x4s and six 2x6 used at the center and the middle of each side where the pillars attached. The frames are 9.5 bricks wide counting with 2x4 bricks.

This may be the tallest tower I can build in my house. Luckily, from the front door of my house I have a half flight of stairs down and a half flight up to my living room with a vaulted ceiling.

The entire tower was built on a shelf resting on a stair near the bottom and a chair. I leveled the shelf before I got started.

By the time I was half way up, the structure already had a lot of wobble, not side by side but rotational. At the top it was this got even worse. I'm not sure this is bad. Flexibility is strength for buildings built in earthquake prone areas.

I could not get a single picture that showed the entire tower so here are two that give you an idea.

Thanks again to my wife, Pat, that helped me build frames and pillars. She also came up with a great idea to make an outline of the frames on paper which sped up the process.

Another Picture of 9 feet 10 inches

For those interested in looking a little more closely at the tower from September 4, I posted I higher resolution photo.

Backdated posting.

Inventory Day

I did not want to count my Legos so instead my wife and I sorted them by size and weighted each. We then weighed a sample of each kind, counted the sample, and used that to estimate how many we have.

2875 1x1
4596 1x2
788 1x3
2409 1x4
512 1x6
224 1x8
4 1x10
2 1x16
2809 2x2
839 2x3
2017 2x4
197 2x6

17272 Total (not counting strange pieces)

The basis of the counts are weighing a sample with a known
count and extrapolating based on weight.

100 1x1 weigh 1.6 oz - 47.6 oz total
100 1x2 weigh 2.9 oz - 133.3 oz total
100 1x3 weigh 4.3 oz - 33.9 oz total
100 1x4 weigh 5.7 oz - 137.3 oz total
50 1x6 weigh 4.1 oz - 42.0 oz total
30 1x8 weigh 3.3 oz - 24.7 oz total
100 2x2 weigh 4.2 oz - 118.0 oz total
50 2x3 weigh 3.1 oz - 51.4 oz total
100 2x4 weigh 7.9 oz - 159.4 oz total
30 2x6 weigh 3.9 oz - 25.7 oz total

48 lb of legos

Most of these have been Christmas/Hannukah presents to the kids and me from my generous wife.

Bowed Pillars 7 feet 11.5 inches

Todays tower proved a good way not to make a tower. I made tall pillars 4x4 in cross section held together by "squares" 15.5 2x4 blocks wide on each edge and three layers thick. The pillars where each 122 layers. I only had three squares: at the top, middle, and floor. The tower stood 7 feet 11.5 inches tall. Not as tall as the previous one. The 122 layer tall pillars bowed like crazy. Clearly these pillars are too long without additional support. I should have used five or six squares for this height. No picture of this one (the bowed pillars were just too embarrassing). I guess I chaulk this one up to a learning experience.