Okay, so today I decided to mess around with some seemingly random stuff: cushions, volleyball, engineering, and timber. It sounds like a weird combo, right? But I had this idea bouncing around in my head, and I just had to try it out.

First, I grabbed a bunch of old cushions we had lying around. You know, the kind you toss on the couch or use for extra padding. I figured they’d be good for absorbing impact, which was important for the, uh, experiment I had in mind.

Next up, the volleyball. I’ve always been fascinated by how much force these things can take without popping. I mean, people spike them at crazy speeds! So, I thought, “Why not use that to my advantage?”

The Timber Part

Now for the timber. I had some scrap pieces of wood in the garage – leftover from a previous project. Nothing fancy, just some 2x4s and some plywood. I started by building a simple frame, basically a small, sturdy box, using the 2x4s. This was going to be the ‘structure’ for my little project.

Then, I cut the plywood to fit the top of the frame. This would be the ‘impact zone’, the place where the volleyball would be, well, impacting.

Putting it all together

This is where the cushions came in. I stuffed them inside the wooden frame, making sure they were packed in tightly. The idea was to create a shock-absorbing layer beneath the plywood top.

• Frame built: Check.
• Plywood top: Check.
• Cushion stuffing: Check.

Now for the fun part (and the slightly “engineering” part, I guess). I placed the volleyball on top of the plywood. The goal? To see how much force the whole contraption could withstand before the wood started to, you know, crack or break. I used another timber to hit and added more power each time.

And to my surprise, the damn thing hold well, I was expecting it to crash at first hit, but that didn’t happen. the cushions were able to distribute the force!

I kept hitting the volleyball, harder and harder, and the cushion-timber structure absorbed a surprising amount of force! Eventually, of course, the wood started to splinter a bit (it was just scrap wood, after all), but it held up way longer than I expected.

So, yeah, that was my weird little experiment for the day. It was a fun way to combine some random materials and see what I could build. Not exactly high-tech engineering, but hey, it kept me entertained!