This is an experiment from Super Charged Science. It's in the Forces section and apparently a Barrel Roof can hold up to 400 times it's own weight!
We printed off the template and my youngest followed the video and did all the mountain and valley folds and we ended up with a tunnel shaped piece of paper, it certainly didn't look strong enough to hold anything let alone 400 times it's own weight but we carried on.
We then had to balance two pencils on the top so that the paper had something to balance on.
We then stopped and put a place mat underneath the tunnel to stop any sliding on the work surface and the pencils back on top and then another place mat on top of that. We were amazed that it could hold so much.
Then we started to place the paper on top. Unfortunatly we didn't get to 400 sheets, I think we made it to 60 and then the whole thing collapsed in a heap. Even so we were still impressed that our little tunnel had done so well.
If you go to the first photo you'll notice that not all 'legs' were touching the work surface, I think this was the problem. It was such a simple experiment to do and we had fun; it was a great one for us to start with because my daughter has done lots of origami before so didn't feel out of her depth with it.
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