The question of the day is what is the breaking strain of a KitKat? This came up in conversation in the Strugglers last Friday “early doors”. I don’t recall the context, it was in the pub. In the pub these things have to be written down, or immediately forgotten.

The act of writing things you hear in pubs used to be done on the back of beer mats. Nowadays it’s rattled off in an email addressed to oneself which is what I did in this case. Saves a fortune in beer mats. Extends their useful life. People will no doubt still vandalise beermats, primarily in the execution of the “who threw that beermat” joke whereby a couple of tears are made in one side of the mat which is then affixed to the nostrils. The person stands up and utters “who threw that beermat”. Always gets a laugh. Ish. The how many beermats can you flip game is not described here as it is not destructive to the beermat. I digress.

Continuing with the digression one has to ask oneself how many good jokes heard in pubs have been forgotten because they weren’t immediately written down. How many great ideas have foundered on the beer washed rocks of the tavern, inn or public house?

Lots. When I was a student in Bangor I used to occasionally hitch-hike the length of Wales to visit my grandmother who lived in Cefneithin, a small mining community between Llanelli and Caerfyrddin. She had a traditional Welsh approach to meals. A cooked breakfast would be followed by elevenses, lunch at 12, afternoon tea at four and then dinner at 6pm at which point, after a respectable interval I would be kicked out to the pub and return home to a plate of ham sandwiches waiting for me in the kitchen.

On one such occasion I went to the pub and woke up the next day to find a beermat with the words “parrot” and “coal” written on the back. They were the key points to a great joke I’d heard the night before. Only problem was I couldn’t for the life of me remember the rest of the joke. Ah well.

This doesn’t get us any nearer to answering the question of the day. Before we can answer we have to agree on the unit of measure used to define the breaking strain. If you look up “breaking strain” on Wikipedia you find yourself redirected to a page about Deformation mechanics. I had hoped to come up with a post here that illustrated an intellectual grasp of the necessary physics associated with KitKat breaking strains described in an easily understood way that further showed me as a true man of the people.

Unfortunately having stared at the Wikipedia page for some time my brain began to hurt. I pulled back before the activity got too dangerous. My brain too, like the humble KitKat, has a breaking strain. The units for the breaking strain of my brain are likely to be different to that of the breaking strain of a KitKat. I am unable to describe either for the reasons mentioned above.

In the interest of finishing off this post to our mutual satisfaction it is still necessary to somehow define the breaking strain of said KitKat. A sensible way to do this might be to describe it in terms of thumb pressure. This however brings with it problems.

Experience tells us that a four finger KitKat will be easier to break than a two finger job, assuming that you’re trying to break it along the vertical central line¹. This is because the additional width of four fingers over two fingers brings with it twice as much amplification of force due to leverage from the sides of the KitKat.

The breaking strain will therefore vary dependent on the size of the KitKat. We don’t need to worry about that here but in the table below the differences are examined. Laboratory testing (in the pub) has shown that there are distinct grades of thumb pressure:

That’s it as far as KitKats and breaking strains go. Hope this has been of some use. Look out for future posts on quantification of willpower when offered another beer.

Images courtesy of @TomAndThat – follow him.

¹ For the purpose of this exercise we assume that the KitKat is to be broken into two equal halves along the central line. Breaking off one finger with three remaining requires totally different physics. We also assume that the KitKat is not being broken across the middle of all fingers. Ironically to do this for four fingers takes more effort than for two which is the total opposite to the scenario first described.

Other food related posts:

How to cook the perfect baked bean
Best pancake toppings
Important announcement on a Sunday morning

There follows herein two partial shed images. The first image is more partial than the second for reasons that are obvious when you compare the two.

Way back when I worked at Marconi there was a  guy called Steve Meats who was a comedian and who as part of his act wore a partial trousers. This was a pair of trousers with the legs cut off at approximately knee height and which were sewn back on with some sort of suspenders. They were funny. The partial trousers have no relation to the partial shed.

The partial shed is still partial at the time of writing because the heavens have verily opened upon the space where the shed stands and health and safety common sense has dictated a withdrawal to the shelter of the whole house and a refreshing cup of tea.

I say whole house but the intention is not to leave the reader with the impression that I am in every room in our not insubstantial dwelling but that the house itself is not partial. This is good because partial houses can be very damp, especially in the prevailing meteorological conditions and dampness can lead to discomfort and wet socks. As a point of information I am not wearing socks at the moment. Summer is almost upon us and socks are not always needed at this time of year.

In revealing that the house is not partial I am of course not saying that it is impartial. This play with words would be a misleading use of an alternate definition for the word partial.

The partial shed requires the fitting of a roof for it to no longer be partial. Fitting the roof is going to require the use of step ladders and is better done in dry conditions. I am not optimistic that suitable conditions will be in play before Tuesday which is the next dry day according to the Met Office website.

The Met Office is reasonably accurate these days and I am happy that no further shed erecting will take place before then. This will be reviewed in the light of conditions on the ground, just as umpires will assess whether play can restart after rain has stopped play in a cricket match. The shed will not have had the benefit of ground staff running out to protect it with covers. The head groundsman at our house, ie me, has adjudged that little harm will come to it in the meantime.

It must be said that the process of erecting a (partial) shed is quite satisfying. A man easily rediscovers diy skills long considered lost, or at least vestigial. Instinct comes in to play. This should be seen as especially useful once the reader is armed with the knowledge that the shed is around fifteen years old and was originally a play house.   Its disassembly and reassembly on its new site is the completion of its reincarnation as a shed/garden furniture store, a process that will also save the Davies household several hundred pounds by obviating the need to buy a new metal shed which is what I had my eye on.

Because the shed is old the construction process is not exact and the insertion of additional screws here and there has been necessary to get the job done. This has been made effortless by the use of the new Makita cordless drill/screwdriver which every man should have.

At this point I am going to call literary proceedings to a halt. The rain has stopped, we are into a sunny spell and I am off out to inspect the wicket. We may get this shed finished before Tuesday after all 🙂

A short while later… the rain did hold off long enough to get the roof on, with the help of Robert from the allotment over the back (thx Rob). Still need to get some new roofing felt on but the three pictures below otherwise show the whole process.

And finally the view from the inside of the shed looking out. Wahey…