DEMONSTRATION

Breaking Point: Testing Tensile Strength

© 2010 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

WGBH GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MATERIALS RESEARCH SOCIETY.

33
 MAKING STUFF STRONGER Demonstration
Overview S
“ trong as steel” is a familiar saying, and it’s an apt one. Steel, an iron
alloy, is one of the strongest and most versatile materials around. But,
as host David Pogue discovers in NOVA’s Making Stuff: Stronger, scientists
TITLE are creating new materials that push the idea of strong to extraordinary
Breaking Point: Testing Tensile new limits.
Strength
In Making Stuff: Stronger, materials scientists demonstrate the latest
SHOW breakthroughs in strengthening old materials and developing new,
Making Stuff: Stronger stronger ones. Some of these include:

DESCRIPTION
• Kevlar® (a registered trademark of DuPont)—a unique polymer fiber
The audience will participate to tough enough to stop the impact force of a bullet with a few layers of
test and compare the tensile fabric, each only millimeters thick
strength and elasticity of Kevlar®,
• Spider silk—a natural protein polymer similar to Nylon that, pound
Nylon, and cotton thread by lifting
weighted buckets with wooden
for pound, has more tensile strength than either Kevlar® or steel.
dowels. Visitors will then compare Scientists have genetically engineered goats to produce this protein
the tensile strength of Kevlar® to in their milk
steel wire. In both rounds, Kevlar®
• Carbon nanotubes—hollow pipelines just a few atoms thick that may
wins handily.
be the strongest material yet discovered and could one day be used
OBJECTIVE
to build many things, including a 200-mile-long cable to lift things
Visitors will learn: into orbit
• that materials can be strong in
different ways; for example, some Materials scientists are asking:
possess high tensile strength • How can we make materials stronger?
while others are more elastic
• that materials scientists test the • How can stronger materials be lighter, cheaper, or better in other
strength of materials by stressing ways?
them to their breaking point
• How can we develop new strong materials for specific applications?
O T H E R K E Y TA L K I N G P O I N T S
• materials scientists have invented
synthetic polymers, such as
Kevlar®, that are stronger than
Science Background
natural polymers (and in this T E N S I L E ST R E N G T H A N D E L A ST I C I T Y
case, steel).
The word strong actually refers to a range of properties, each defined by
• the strength of a material is
determined by its molecular the ability to stand up to a different type of force. Strength is a measure
structure. of how well a material can resist a force (or load) before failing. The load
is distributed over an area and is more accurately defined as stress (force
AUDI ENCE per unit area). There are different kinds of stresses, including tension
General public, ages 10 and up (pulling), compression (squeezing), impact (a sharp blow), torsion
(twisting), and shearing (surfaces sliding past one another). We apply
TIME these stresses in our daily lives when we pull open a door, push a cart, or
© 2010 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

Set-up: 10 minutes twist the cap off a bottle.

Presentation: 20 minutes

MAKING STUFF STRONGER Demonstration 34

 Materials scientists test the strength of materials by stressing them to the
breaking point, called failure, at which point the material ruptures and cannot
rebound to its original condition or shape.

Tensile strength is how much stress a material can withstand while being
pulled in opposite directions. This stress causes the material to temporarily
lengthen. If the stress is low enough, when you release the force, the material
will return to its original length—this ability for the thread to stretch and
rebound is a property called elasticity. The amount the material lengthens is
called the elongation. (If you divide the elongation by the original length you
get what is called strain.)

If you continue to pull, the bonds between atoms in the material will start to
break, eventually reaching the point at which the material will not rebound
when the stress is released; the deformation is permanent, or plastic. When
enough bonds break, the material snaps apart. The amount of stress the
material can endure at the time of failure is the strength of a material.

COT TO N , N Y L O N , K E V L A R ® , A N D ST E E L
This demonstration investigates and compares the tensile strength of cotton,
Nylon, Kevlar®, and steel, and shows that different materials can be strong in
different ways.

Cotton is a natural polymer, or plastic, composed of long chains of cellulose

molecules. These small units of cellulose are formed through side-by-side
hydrogen bonding. However, because its molecules are randomly arranged, it
has low tensile strength, which means it will break under relatively low stress.
Cotton will stretch 8–10 percent before breaking. Size 35 cotton thread (an
equivalent gauge to size 46 Nylon and Kevlar® thread) has a tensile strength of
approximately 2 pounds (0.9 kilograms).

Nylon is a lightweight synthetic polymer that also has long strands and
hydrogen bonds, but it has a more ordered molecular structure than the
cellulose in cotton, which gives it higher tensile strength. Like rungs of a ladder,
the hydrogen bonds lock the rigid molecules into a tight formation. In addition,
Nylon will stretch 30–40 percent of its length before breaking, which makes it
an ideal material for parachute cords, for example. Size 46 Nylon thread has a
tensile strength of approximately 8 pounds (3.6 kilograms).

Kevlar® is a lightweight synthetic polymer with a highly ordered molecular

structure that gives it the highest tensile strength of the four materials.
Like Nylon and cotton, it also has hydrogen bonds between strands. And like
Nylon, it has ordered polymer strands, which increase the strength. On top of
that, however, Kevlar® has rigid ring structures within the polymer strands,
which further increases the strength. Polymers with ring structures have high
tensile strengths.
© 2010 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

MAKING STUFF STRONGER Demonstration 35

 Molecular Structure of
Kevlar®
Kevlar® molecules are composed
of long chains of repeating units
(in bold at right). These chains of
rigid rings run parallel to the fibers
and are bonded to each other
by strong hydrogen bonds. Like
rungs of a ladder, the hydrogen
bonds lock the rigid rings into a
tight formation giving Kevlar® its
superior tensile strength.

Size 46 Kevlar® thread has a tensile strength of approximately 18 pounds (8

kilograms). However, larger sizes of Kevlar® thread will hold 400 pounds or
more. Also, Kevlar® fibers will only stretch 3–5 percent before breaking. So it is
much less elastic than Nylon of the same gauge, but possesses much higher
tensile strength. That is, Kevlar® doesn’t stretch much before breaking, but it
can withstand a much greater force before it breaks.

Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that, like all metals, has a crystalline
structure, which means the atoms are arranged in an ordered pattern. The
addition of carbon hardens the iron by locking the layers of iron atoms into
a strong, rigid structure. In general, metals have higher tensile strengths
than polymers. In the case of Kevlar® the rigid ring structures give it superior
strength for a polymer, especially such a lightweight one. Pound for pound,
Kevlar® is five times stronger than steel.

Material Tensile Strength Elasticity

(What’s the maximum stress it (How much does it
can withstand before breaking?) stretch before breaking?)

Cotton Thread size 35 2 lbs (0.9 kg) 8–10%

Nylon Thread size 46 8 lbs (3.6 kg) 30–40%

Steel Wire size 28 10 lbs (4.5 kg) 8–15%

Kevlar® Thread size 46 18 lbs (8 kg) 3–5%

A bulletproof plastic? Give me a break! Kevlar® has a rigid structure and does
not stretch much. When a bullet strikes a vest, it hits the layers of Kevlar®
and acts to pull them apart. The Kevlar® fabric in a bulletproof vest is made
of several very thin layers of fibers. The fibers are woven perpendicular to
each other to help distribute the force of an impact. When Kevlar® is struck,
it responds by stretching individual fibers a small amount. This serves to
© 2010 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

dissipate the energy of the bullet. Some of the fibers break and also absorb the
energy. The total amount of energy a material can absorb is its toughness, and
Kevlar® fabric is one of the toughest materials ever created.

MAKING STUFF STRONGER Demonstration 36

 Materials List
• 1 case of 24 plastic bottles of water, • Demonstration Title Sign and
16.9 oz/0.5 L each, unopened applications collage (see Resources) Materials and supplies for
(to use as uniform weights, –mount on foam core or insert this demonstration can be
1 bottle = 1.16 lbs/0.525 kg) into a clear plastic display rack found at most hardware
and home improvement
• 4 identical 5-gallon buckets • (optional) Nylon sample stores. The specific thread
with firmly attached handles (e.g., pantyhose) types and gauges are
available online at
• 5 metal S-hooks large enough to • (optional) NOVA Making Stuff:
thethreadexchange.com.
latch onto the bucket handles Stronger video clip (see Resources) Kevlar® fabric samples or
• 5 wooden dowels, h/i" x 48" and video display equipment tape can be obtained
• (optional) photo of Kevlar® from several online vendors
• 10 pairs of safety glasses including fibreglast.com,
(clean after each use) bulletproof vest or real vest if
jamestowndistributors.com,
possible and fiberglasssupply.com.
• cotton thread, size 35 (equivalent
diameter to size 46 Nylon and
Kevlar®) For Resources, visit pbs.org/nova/
• Kevlar® filament thread, size 46 education/makingstuff

• Kevlar® fabric swatches

• Nylon thread, size 46
• steel picture-hanging wire,
28-gauge (twice the diameter
of the threads)
• tape (vinyl electrical tape works
well for securing the thread to
the dowels and hooks)
• wipes, to clean safety glasses
• wire cutters
• bucket labels (see Resources)

Showing Video Clips from MAKING STUFF: STRONGER

If you are able to show video at the
demonstration site, the video clip from
NOVA’s Making Stuff: Stronger can be
used either as an introduction or as a
follow-up to your demonstration. The
clip can also be played on a continuous
loop nearby to draw visitors into the
© 2010 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

demonstration area.

MAKING STUFF STRONGER Demonstration 37

 Advance Preparation
1. Test the demonstration before presenting it to an audience.

2. Assemble three dowels, each with a different type of thread (cotton, Nylon,
Kevlar®). For each dowel, cut a piece of thread 48 inches long (the same as
the length of the dowel).

Wrap one end of the thread around the center of the dowel 10 times and
tape it firmly in place with several layers of electrical tape. Wrap the other
end of the thread around the top of an S-hook 10 times and tape it firmly in
place with several layers of electrical tape. Do not knot the thread, as a knot
forms a point of weakness in the thread. This should leave about 12 inches
of thread exposed.

How to Attach the Thread

and Wire to the Dowel and
S-Hook
Wrap the ends of the thread and
wire around the center of the
dowel and the top of the S-hook
and tape firmly in place.

3. Assemble two more dowels, another dowel with Kevlar® thread set up
as above, and one set up with the steel wire. Cut a piece of wire about
24 inches in length (half the length of the dowel). Wrap one end around
the center of the dowel and the other end around the top of an S-hook,
five times each, and secure it with electrical tape. Be careful not to bend
the wire more than necessary, as bends, like knots, can create points of
weakness. This should leave about 12 inches of wire exposed.

4. Place the labels on the four buckets. A standard plastic 5-gallon bucket,
available at most hardware or home improvement stores, weighs
a little over 1.5 pounds. The weight of the bucket alone may be enough to
break the cotton thread.
© 2010 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

MAKING STUFF STRONGER Demonstration 38

 5. Set the stage. Just before the demonstration:
• Set out the Nylon and Kevlar® samples.
• Place the first three labeled buckets (cotton, Nylon, and Kevlar®) and
three threaded dowels side-by-side on the floor with eight water bottles
next to each one.
• Set the other two dowels (Kevlar® and steel) and the bucket labeled steel
out of view for the first part of the demonstration.
safety notes
• Cue up the NOVA video clip, if you are using it.
• Have your volunteers put
• Keep the threads, scissors, wire, and tape on hand to re-thread the on safety goggles.
dowels in between demonstrations. Or, if the demonstration is to be
• Buckets can be lifted by
repeated, consider two sets of dowels and hooks to limit set-up time in
single volunteers or a pair
between demonstrations. of volunteers (see photo,
• Put on your safety glasses and the bulletproof vest, if available. (Or ask a left). Assign two lifters per
bucket, one on each end of
volunteer to wear it.)
the dowel. Assign children
• Post the Demonstration Title Sign on the cart/table. to the cotton thread first,
then the Nylon as they will
be lighter loads to lift. Steer
adult volunteers first
toward the Kevlar®.
• Ensure that volunteers hold
the dowels and buckets at a
safe distance from their
faces and other visitors to
avoid rebound or dropping
the bucket on toes.

6. Note: Due to the very low tensile strength of the cotton, the line may break Thread Type Water Bottles
immediately, under just the weight of the bucket. After each line breaks, the Cotton 0–1
water bottles from that bucket can be used to continue the test. The likely
Nylon 4–5
outcome of the test is shown at right.
Kevlar® 11–12
© 2010 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

MAKING STUFF STRONGER Demonstration 39

 Demonstration Script
1. Welcome visitors to the demonstration and briefly introduce the show.
“Welcome to this Making Stuff demonstration. Making Stuff: Stronger,
Smaller, Cleaner, Smarter is a four-part NOVA series on materials science that
will air on PBS in January 2011. This demonstration accompanies the Making
Stuff: Stronger episode.”

2. Engage your visitors. “What are some strong materials? (steel, concrete, etc.
Accept all answers.) Those are good examples, but what does it really mean
for a material to be ‘strong’?” (Accept all answers.)

3. Introduce materials science. “Well, it turns out there is an entire field of

science dedicated to answering that question. These scientists are called
materials scientists and some of them develop and test materials by breaking
them to see how strong they are. Wouldn’t that be a fun job, to break things
for a living? You may be familiar with some of the tests already.”
• Perhaps you’ve seen video of car crash tests where a car is hooked onto a
cable and slammed into a wall—that’s an impact test to see how much
force the materials can withstand before breaking.
• There are also machines that pull materials apart with more and more Presentation tips
force until they stretch out and break—that kind of test tells materials
• Encourage participation
scientists how much tensile strength, which is how much stress, or pulling, by having the audience
the materials can withstand before breaking. members count in unison
as the water bottles are
4. Introduce the challenge. “Well, we don’t have a machine like that here but added to the buckets.
we can do a simple test to investigate tensile strength and elasticity, which is • Use hand signals to help
how much something can stretch before breaking.” volunteers raise the
buckets at a steady pace.
5. Get volunteers. Solicit three to six volunteers to lift the dowels and one to Slowly raise your hand,
three other volunteers to load the buckets. Distribute the safety glasses and palm up to signal lifting
instruct the volunteers to put them on. and a flat outward palm
to signal stop.
6. Describe the procedure. While the volunteers hook the S-hooks to the • Have volunteers set the
bucket handles, say: “We’re going to test the tensile strength and elasticity bucket down on the floor
of three different materials. All three materials are polymers, which are before adding each water
materials whose molecules are made up of long chains of repeating atoms.” bottle.

• Cotton: a lightweight natural fiber that some of you might be wearing

right now
• Nylon: the very first synthetic, or human-made, fiber, which was invented
by materials scientists in 1935
• Kevlar®: a lightweight synthetic fiber that was invented by materials
scientists in 1965 and is used in bulletproof vests, tires, and firefighting gear

7. Ask for predictions. “All three of these threads are the same diameter so it is a
fair test of the strength of the thread. Which material do you think will be the
© 2010 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

strongest? How many think it will be the cotton?...the Nylon?... the Kevlar®?”

8. Load the buckets. With the buckets on the floor, ask the loader(s) to add one
water bottle to each bucket and step back. Then ask the lifters to gradually
MAKING STUFF STRONGER Demonstration 40
 hoist the three buckets at the same time. Caution the lifters not to jerk or
yank the dowels as that could snap a line and is a different kind of stress
How to Gauge Elasticity
than the one being tested.
• Ask audience members to
9. Continue the test lowering the buckets, adding water bottles and lifting the pay attention to how much
buckets, until each thread breaks. each line stretches before
the bucket lifts off the floor.
• When the cotton breaks, say: “Okay, so we just saw that the tensile For example, the Nylon
strength of cotton is very low, just a few pounds. And how much did it thread will stretch for some
stretch?” (A little bit. Cotton stretches, or elongates, 8–10 percent.) But time before the bucket
finally lifts off the floor, but
what about the other two?
the Kevlar® bucket will rise
• When the Nylon breaks, say: “Okay, so now we see that Nylon has greater almost immediately after
tensile strength than cotton. And how much did it stretch?” (A lot more. the volunteer begins lifting.
Nylon stretches 30–40 percent.) • Ask the lifters how much
they feel the lines stretching
• When the Kevlar® breaks, review the final bottle counts and say: “Okay, so
when they lift the buckets.
we’ve just seen that this material has more than twice the tensile strength
• Visually compare the
of Nylon and almost 10 times as much as cotton. And how much did it
lengths of the line while the
stretch?” (Not very much. Kevlar® stretches only 3–5 percent.)
buckets are raised in the air.

10. Compare Kevlar® to steel. “But how do you think Kevlar® would stand up to
steel?” Bring out the steel and Kevlar® dowels and say: “Here we have a steel
wire that is twice the diameter of the Kevlar® thread. Which do you think will
have the greater tensile strength?” (Accept all answers. Many in the audience
will expect the steel to be stronger.)

11. Repeat the test, testing Kevlar® versus steel, using two bottles of water per
lift. The steel should break first, at about 6–8 bottles. If time permits, keep Q Why is the Kevlar® thread
going until the Kevlar® again breaks at about 10–12 bottles. so strong?

A Failure happens when the

12. Summarize. “So we’ve seen that Kevlar® has greater tensile strength than
stress overcomes the force of the
the other materials, including steel, but is less elastic.” atomic bonds that hold the
material together. The stronger
13. Pass around the Kevlar® fabric samples and ask: “Can anyone guess why the bonds, the more force it takes
those properties make Kevlar® good for bulletproof vests?” (Kevlar® fibers can to make the material fail. Also,
absorb a lot of force while stretching very little, which stops the bullet. If it bonds are stronger when the
were more elastic, like Nylon [hold up the Nylon pantyhose and stretch them] molecules form a rigid, regular
it would allow the bullet’s force to impact the wearer. Also, the fibers are pattern. All three of the polymers
have hydrogen bonds, but cotton
woven perpendicular to each other to create a net that further dissipates the
molecules are randomly
force of the bullet. This protects the wearer from receiving its full impact.) arranged, while Nylon molecules
have a more ordered structure
14. Wrap up. “So what does the word strong really mean?” (Accept all answers.) making it stronger. Steel has a
Then reiterate: "As this demonstration shows, a material can be strong in one highly ordered crystalline
respect (tensile strength) and weak in another (elasticity). However, materials structure that makes it very
scientists can turn those different properties into advantages when designing strong. Kevlar® molecules are
new materials and products. For example, Nylon, which has greater elasticity also highly ordered, but they
have additional rigid ring
than Kevlar® is used more often for parachute cords, where the stretchy fibers
structures that give Kevlar®
decrease the jerking motion when the chute is deployed."
© 2010 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

superior tensile strength.

15. Conclude the demo. Ask if anyone has any questions, and share some other
applications of Kevlar® (see page 42).

MAKING STUFF STRONGER Demonstration 41

 Applications
Materials scientists often combine materials to produce composites that
have unique properties (flexibility, stiffness, elasticity, etc.). These are a few
applications of Kevlar® and composites containing Kevlar®:

Applications of Kevlar®
• bicycle helmets
• protective suits for
motorcyclists
• the hulls of sailboats, yachts,
canoes, and kayaks
• the strings of tennis rackets
• snowboards and skis
• baseball bats and hockey sticks
• industrial gloves for workers
who handle glass, sharp
metals, etc.
• hoses and pipes on deep-ocean
oil rigs
• protective shields for satellites

Glossary and spacecraft

• strong, fire-resistant mattresses
• firefighting clothing and gear
• elastic deformation–change that is non-permanent; when the stress is
released the material returns to its previous shape • inside-the-home storm rooms
that can stand up to tornados.
• elasticity–the ability for a material to lengthen under stress and then
return to its original shape when the stress is removed
• elongation–the amount the material lengthens while undergoing elastic IMAGE CREDITS • Pg. 33: Top left: ©WGBH, Top right:
©iStockphoto.com/ALEAIMAGE, Bottom left: ©WGBH/

deformation Mark Ostow, Bottom right: ©iStockphoto.com/OGphoto;;

Pg. 36: Illustration: Zeke Smith; Pg. 37: ©WGBH/Sara Pratt,
©WGBH; Pg. 38: Illustration: Zeke Smith; Pg. 39: ©WGBH/
• failure–the rupture or breaking of a material, with no chance of returning Sara Pratt; Pg. 42: Clockwise from left: ©WGBH,
©iStockphoto.com/Vadzim Antsukh, Courtesy Fly Racing,
to the way it was Courtesy Koenigsegg Automotive AB

• plastic deformation–deformation, or change, that is permanent; when the

stress is released the material does not return to its previous shape
• polymer–large molecules made of long chains of repeating atoms; can be
synthetic or natural
• strain–the elongation divided by the original length
• strength–a measure of how well a material can resist a force (or load)
before failing
• stress–force per unit area; types of stress include tension (pulling),
compression (squeezing), impact (a sharp blow), torsion (twisting), and
shearing (surfaces sliding past one another).
© 2010 WGBH EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

• tensile strength–how much stress a material can withstand while being

pulled apart
• toughness–the total amount of energy a material can absorb at fracture
or failure
MAKING STUFF STRONGER Demonstration 42