I saw a crazy Christian group on campus yesterday which was using the “power of God” to give them super human strength. This involved ripping telephone books in half (this is a trick and not very difficult) and smashing unopened coke cans between their hands. I’d never seen this done before and it was pretty impressive. Does anyone know if there is some kind of trick to this or if it’s just brute force? The guys doing this were pretty big, but I think hand placement and other factors must come into play.
What they do:
They place their hands on the long side of the coke can (not the top and bottom) and push their hands together (no hitting) until the coke can explodes. I watched this about five times and four of those times the can split in half, the other time the pop to split open.
I went home and some friends and I gave it a try. It’s really really hard. But we each managed to do one can with about 30 min of vein popping pushing and lots of shaking the can ( I assume this helps and I assume the can being hot would help). But this Christian group was doing cans in 30 seconds. Anyone heard of a trick like this?
<Okay, now insert that “Oh” sound here that Cheri Oteri used to make whenever she played Barbara Walters and would say to Debbie Matenop-etc. “I will destroy you” OH.>
it seems like shaking wouldn’t help at all. the pressure created by the carbon dioxide in the can pushes out with such a force that pushing it in would be like trying to play tug of war with a bull. if the can were cold, however, it would be push-inable. maybe cold and shaken a little, but hot and tempest tossed would put such a force on the can that pushing in would only alleviate it. of course, i am not exactly a physisist, but that’s my story and i’m stickin with it.
I don’t know how they do it, but I have a couple guesses. Tomorrow why don’t you bring your own cans of soda and a phone book, and see if they can repeat it with the ones you supplied. - - MC
I never mastered the trick myself, but my little old Irish great-uncle used to win bar bets all the time, by ripping phone books. I saw him do it several times- the trick is, you have to hold the book at such an angle that you’re really ripping only a few pages at a time.
He loved watching some muscular guy strain at the book with all his might, and not getting anywhere… and then ripping it without breaking a sweat.
if this Christian group can use the “power of God” to give them “super human strength”, why don’t they enter weight lifting competitions, particularly the Olympics?
If on the other hand they want to recruit you into their sect, they just need you to be ‘gullible’. please don’t be offended by that! You did say ‘I’d never seen this done before and it was pretty impressive.’ As a trick, yes it was, but what’s that got to do with religion?
I enjoy watching magicians, even though it’s just skilful use of misdirection and props. I pay to be entertained.
However these charlatans are lying to you to get your money. If their faith is so good, why not let it speak for itself?
if this Christian group can use the “power of God” to give them “super human strength”, why don’t they enter weight lifting competitions, particularly the Olympics?
If on the other hand they want to recruit you into their sect, they just need you to be ‘gullible’. please don’t be offended by that! You did say ‘I’d never seen this done before and it was pretty impressive.’ As a trick, yes it was, but what’s that got to do with religion?
I enjoy watching magicians, even though it’s just skilful use of misdirection and props. I pay to be entertained.
However these charlatans are lying to you to get your money. If their faith is so good, why not let it speak for itself?
slightly off-topic, but since the question was raised, this is really simple to do once you get the hang of it. our fragile little physics teacher in high school showed up how to do this one, and it basically does deal with tearing one page at a time. it’s a bit more difficult to explain in words, but i’ll try. you basically start by folding the book horizontally, and then you unfold it, but in such a way that the pages kind of separate themselves one by one and look like layered rainbows. on one side you will have a flat sheet of paper and the pages will gradually arc more and more to the end. is this making any sense? anyhow, then you can more or less just use you hands to rip through the phone book, and what actually happens is you are tearing through each sheet (or a couple) one by one.
I have seen the aforementioned group or one similar. The ones I saw never claimed that God gave them super-human strength. They were just massively developed weightlifters who used the feats of strength as schtick to draw people to hear their message.
As to the coke can trick, aluminum can are very thin and the pop top is not exactly welded on so a very strong person could probably learn to fo this no problem.
“This Christian Group” is called John Jacobs and the Power Team.
The idea behind what they are doing is not that the “Power of Jesus” is making them rip apart phone books and crush coke cans, but rather that the “Power of Jesus” is giving them the internal strength that makes them motivated to do such things.
They put on their show…and then they talk about what God has done in their lives. The question was posed, “Why dont they enter Olympic competitions.” The answer is simple…They do the strength shows to draw a crowd and tell them about God…do the Olympics have a preaching event afterwards?
Didn’t think so…
Oh yeah, and the guys in question, they’re huge…I watched them all blow up 4 hot water bottles in a row until the bottles burst a couple years ago. Not balloons…Hot water bottles…and there isn’t a trick to it. I went with the lady that bought them for the show. They were standard brand Wal-mart bought hot water balloons.
Take a phone book, can be a thick one, put it in the oven at 200 for 5 hours, I think, then Viola! You can rip it apart real easily & it doesn’t have to be at an angle. It does create quite a stink in the oven though.
I suppose they do the can thing with a similar sneaky way.
I’ve ripped apart phone books and I am a super-weed. The trick is to bend the spine accross your knee. Once the spine splits even I can pull the two halves apart.
The last time an American male won the heavyweight division in Olympic lifting was the one and only Paul Anderson, the strongest man who ever lived.
He was also a committed Christian who did tours of strong man stunts to raise money for his Christian youth home.
He also raised the greatest weight ever lifted by a human being, 6,270 pounds at the Ford Auto Plant in Tacoma, Georgia, in 1957.
Guinness also lists him as holding the highest ever career total in the powerlifts to go with his Olympic gold and World Championships. All steroid-free.
You obviously missed the U.S. woman diver, whose immediate reply to an NBC correspondent upon being asked what it was like to win the gold was: “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.”