Who has never screamed in pain after stepping on a lying Lego barefoot? This universally dreaded experience, particularly by parents of messy children (of children…) has finally been scientifically studied! A rather courageous researcher, it must be admitted, named Nate Scovill has embarked on a perilous mission: to objectively determine which Lego piece is the most painful when stepped on.
No more guesswork and heated debates on Reddit! Our intrepid scientist has developed a rigorous experimental protocol. And although he himself admits to not being an engineer, his approach turned out to be remarkably ingenious (you get the almost-rhyme).
Rather than sacrificing his own feet on the altar of science (which would have been heroic but hardly reproducible), he created a test bench capable of reproducing the force exerted by a 68 kg human walking on a LEGO. The device, composed of a weighted articulated arm and a quick release mechanism, then has to simulate the impact of a step with a controlled force.
First phase of testing: observing the impact of the different parts on a piece of cardboard. 3 superimposed layers of cardboard made it possible to precisely measure the damage caused by each brick, even creating a deformation gradient which provided particularly detailed data.
For the second phase, our researcher was inspired by MythBusters by making a ballistic gel artificial foot. This material, used by the FBI to test the impact of bullets, perfectly simulates the density of human tissue. Despite some technical difficulties with the molding (and a costly error in the dosage of the gel), this innovation allowed even more precise measurements.
But how do you choose from the thousands of existing Lego pieces?
Because yes, the Danish brand has created more than 4,000 different shapes over the years. To establish a relevant pre-selection, our researcher then turned to the most qualified experts: the victims themselves, via the Reddit and Discord communities.
The tests revealed some fascinating results. The classic 2×2 block turns out to be surprisingly lenient. On the other hand, small pointed pieces like wizard hats or tree branches were particularly vicious.
But the big loser is an old Lego wheel which is no longer produced today. Its particularity? A metal axle integrated which practically makes it a giant bug. The rust present on certain examples even adds a risk of infection to the initial trauma ^^.
The study also highlighted an unexpected danger: the famous “brittle brown”, in a brown color, particularly fragile used in old series. These pieces tend to break easily, creating sharp shards. During an extreme test with a slingshot (yes, science goes a long way), these parts literally disintegrated on impact, projecting fragments capable of penetrating the skin.
There you have it, behind every “Ouch! Damn!” muffled in the middle of the night lies a real complex physical interaction between materials, forces and anatomy. This experience also highlights the evolution of safety standards in the toy industry – metal parts and fragile plastics have fortunately disappeared from modern production.
So the next time you step on a Lego piece, you can at least console yourself by telling yourself that you are unwittingly participating in the validation of the data from this study.
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