Does plaiting make yarn stronger??

Question

OK so I've been given this problem to try and solve. The ultimate question I would like to find an answer to is: Does plaiting make yarn stronger?

Firstly I have to get three strands of yarn tied together but not plaited and then compare this to 3 other pieces of yarn plaited together. I have to come up with a way of showing which one is indeed stronger, any ideas??

Answer 1

Tie a length of each sample of yarn to the roof, a tree branch, something that it can hang down from. Make sure that the plaited and unplaited strands are the same length.

Tie the other end of the unplaited string around the handle of a bucket, then place cans of food in the bucket, one at a time. Make a note of how much each can weighs as you do this, and also weigh the bucket. Eventually the yarn will snap from the weight, and when you add up the weight of the bucket and all the cans, you'll know how much weight that yarn can handle.

Untie the (broken) string from the bucket, then tie the empty bucket to the end of the plaited string. Repeat the experiment to find out how much weight the plaited string can take.

This experiment would be more reliable if you repeated the results, eg. did it for three plaited strings and three unplaited strings, but that's not really necessary. When writing the results up, make sure to mention what length of yarn you used, because the amount of weight it can hold decreases as the length increases, so the length is relevant to the results. This also means that the experiment will go faster if you make the strands of yarn as long as possible -- you won't need to use as many cans before they snap.