Pop-up tents are weirder than you think

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I work for Decathlon and work directly with these tents. Your video definitely shone the light on the inner workings. But you solved one of the pains with folding them, by laying them on their side! I'll be happy to show off this method to the customers once spring camping season hits! Thank you!

Never knew my struggle with pop-up tents was actually a lesson in topology. Camping just got a lot more scientific

I was an engineer for a company that manufactured ocean sensors for the navy made with nonwoven textiles and a circular metal bands. The packing method of these devices required the fold that you were demonstrating but with one extra step which made it 5 layers of circles instead of the initial 3 and I became somewhat of an expert with this kind of folding after having to demonstrate the method to our production workers. I could probably fold that tent small enough to fit into an even smaller size bag than what it came in. Someone found a video that demonstrates that technique. https://youtu.be/xP5o1Cikl8A?si=XdW3a0wFbXCI7AJE

You also now know how to fold a bandsaw blade for storage or shipping. The tricky bits are double folding (5 loops) longer blades and unfolding one for use without injury. Dropping the folded blade in a large space and jumping back is one technique for the latter.

6:12 Steve getting some battle scars on his right hand for science and to teach us. Brave soldier.

Nitinol wire is used to actuate surgical robotic tools because of the properties you mentioned in this video - the elasticity means it can be flexed into all sorts of weird shapes and not kink when you push on it - a really rare (and useful!) set of properties for a metal.

1:57 this “fun fact” has such insane consequences it’s amazing. “Two twists” being the same as “no twist” is why you can have spin-1/2 particles (ones you have to rotate by 720° for a “full rotation” instead of 360° like “normal”). Electrons are spin-1/2, and that gives them a particular property: spin-1/2 particles are subject to something called the Pauli Exclusion Principle which states that ‘no two spin-1/2 particles can share a state’ where ‘a state’ basically means ‘all properties’. So two spin-1/2 particles can’t coexist at the same place, with the same energy, etc. At least one thing needs to be different between them. This, it turns out is why atoms have energy levels for electrons - once all the possible states at one energy are used up, the next particle must be at a higher energy because otherwise two would share a state, which they can’t do! In turn, atomic energy levels are basically the core reason that chemistry exists at all. Without chemistry, you don’t have biology, and without biology we wouldn’t exist! So basically, that strange little rubberband twist thing is possible because of the same mathematics that allows the existence of basically everything macroscopic, including humans!! Isn’t reality just amazing?

I really appreciate your commitment to building physical demonstration models! They are great at simplifying things to focus on the phenomenon of interest, while also retaining some of the messy inconveniences of reality that would be lost in a simulation/animation.

i am 35 years old and just learned about that shoe-lace trick...thanks Steve!

If you make you kids a collapsible heat powered boat, could you name it Papa's popup pop-pop boat?

The instructions on Steve’s tent are actually remarkably clear and detailed. The ones on the version I’ve used are basically: 1. Bring these bits together. 2. Perform magic. 3. Profit!

0:18 "I always find that I'm better at something if I can figure out how it works and why it was made to work that way." Oh man! That's exactly my "problem" too. I'm sure it's why I've always struggled with math and have perhaps been perceived as slow at learning by some. It wasn't until only a few years ago when I discovered one of the first math videos on YouTube where someone visually dissected pythagorean theorem, almost like a tear-down of an appliance, and suddenly I got the math and what it did. This is why you're one of my favorite channels, because you deconstruct and/or analogize in a way that very few educators can. Not just explaining the way something works in high level language and abstraction, but in a way that reveals the hidden wires inside the tent and how they work in physical real space. Your water channel experiments (or whatever those are called) are some of the most intuitive and eye opening of all your videos. With that said, people should check out Alpha Phoenix's channel too, if you don't already, he did some water channel experiments on there to better explain advanced electrical concepts, and they are really good, in the way Steve's videos are so good.

Fascinating breakdown of the mechanics behind pop-up tents. I've always struggled with my tent, it's comforting to know there's a purpose behind the design and that I wasn't just terrible at it.

Sign in the outdoors shop window: "Now is the season for our discount tents"

Since you're using Quechua pop up tents: they now fold them differently, you actually start inside the tent and kinda fold it inside out, they added clips to help you with the process. During College I worked as a side job in Decathlon and every now-and-then a person would come in with a unfolded tent which they had bought but were unable to fold back in. XD

You're actually a hero, Steve First the Mould effect, now the Mould Fold. Absolutely brilliant

Circular handheld reflectors used on film sets utilise the precise same geometry so you can have a giant reflector that neatly folds up into a small circle for easy storage. Ngl it is standard practise to casually hand them to new assistances on set and ask them to just put them away. Then you go for a cup of coffee and snigger whilst they get completely confused.

As you mentioned the pop-up tents use rods instead of bands for the frame, so is it possible that the joint of the rods allows them to spin in their axis in order to avoid twist?

Bandsaw blades get packaged the same way as the 3-layer band, with the added fun of one edge being riddled with sharp cutting teeth 😅 Lemme tell ya, hand & finger placement when manipulating the twist is quite important.