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How tall can you build with 54 Jenga blocks?

9 points johnjwang 2 days ago 4 comments

Someone 1 day ago | parent

Can’t some of these easily be improved upon?

For example, for the 12.5°, 15° and 20° ones, replace the two blocks in the top layer by the construction used for the top two blocks in the 25° record.

Also, I think “A lone upright block tips over at 11.3° in its thin direction” doesn’t imply “no matter what you do to the base, you can’t stand blocks up vertically at high tilts.”

I would think you could sneak in cage-like structures like these (seen from the top)

   ABB   A
   A D   ABB
   CCD  CCD
          D
with blocks A and D taking most of the north-to-south loads and B and C taking most of the east-to-west loads.

Possibly that will only work near the base, where there is more pressure from above that prevents these blocks from falling over.

Possibly, such a construct with only three (at 120° angles) or two blocks could work, too.

yorwba 1 day ago | parent

Rearranging blocks at the top to make them taller shifts up the center of gravity for the entire structure, which can destabilize lower levels. So copying part of a more stable tower into a less stable one won't necessarily be an improvement.

jameshart 55 minutes ago | parent

The assumption that the tower would fall over at a certain floor tilt seems to rest on the premise that the opposing sides of a Jenga block are perfectly flat and parallel, and orthogonal to one another.

If they aren't then the blocks can be rotated relative to one another to cancel out floor unevenness.

Hnrobert42 21 minutes ago | parent

Yes.

Or what about stacking off-center/cantilevered against the lean?

I was never very good at these physical engineering problems. I was always really impressed by my classmates who understood it intuitively.