How Much Fruit Can Be Removed Before The Display Falls Down!

 

It's a standard scene in the movies.  There is a chase seen in the store where someone touches a piece of fruit, or a kid grabs something and the whole pile falls off and rolls all over the floor.  This scene lead to a person wondering how much fruit can be removed from the display before the whole thing comes tumbling down.

You might wonder why anyone would want to know the answer to this question but apparently the answer to this question is extremely important since it uses the same dynamics that cause avalanches and landslides.

Unfortunately, it is too difficult to figure out how much dirt or snow can be removed before it call comes crashing down as an avalanche or a landslide but the fruit actually offers the opportunity to see how removing objects results in movement.  This study explored the physics of tumbling produce which is the same action that causes avalanches.Since  most fruits are about the same size and shape and end up spread out in a nonrandom, crystal like form.  This makes it easier to look at the impact of removing one item at a time from the overall structure. 

 So the researchers created a computer program that modeled a different number of spheres stacked in a variety of angles. Then they removed spheres one at a time to determine at which angle the display would fall instantly,  not at all, or somewhere in-between. They took it one step further to determine how many objects had to be removed to make the display collapse if it didn't fall on its own.

Furthermore, they concluded the steeper the angle of the display, the fewer the objects removed before it starts falling and the gentler the angle, the more objects one has to remove.  If the slope is gentle enough, the display won't collapse.  They concluded that one could remove about 10 percent of the fruit in the display before it collapses. So if you have 300 fruit stacked in the display and 29 people grab a piece, it will fall when the 30th person takes one.  

Researchers are hoping to take this a bit further by exploring how many objects can be removed when the objects are of different sizes and are randomly arranged. This is more  involved with avalanches and landslides and the results could provide additional knowledge and open up additional avenues of investigation.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.