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Old 06-10-2017, 12:35 PM   #1
Anders
 
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Default Maximum practical weight for a book

Is there a limit to how much a book can weigh and still function as a book? Assume that it's made for humans.
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Old 06-10-2017, 12:46 PM   #2
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Default Re: Maximum practical weight for a book

I think volume becomes a limit before weight does.

There are books in the local library that are more than a foot thick, you need to rest them on a special stand to read them without breaking the spine.

I seen map books where the pages are 3'x4', need a pretty big table to look at those. If they were any larger one would not be able to see parts of the page.
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Old 06-10-2017, 01:12 PM   #3
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Default Re: Maximum practical weight for a book

3'x4'x1' with a density around 50-60 lbs/cf gives you a maximum weight of 600 lbs. It's kind of stretching the definition of a book, though.

~1.5' wide, ~1.5' tall, 6" thick gives you a maximum weight closer to 50-70 lbs and is recognizably book like. It's a pretty big and heavy book.
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Old 06-10-2017, 02:40 PM   #4
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Default Re: Maximum practical weight for a book

Medieval antiphonary could easily be a couple feet high/wide or even bigger.
There is an Indian sacred "book" on about a thousand marble slabs, but it may be stretching the definition of book a bit ...
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Old 06-10-2017, 02:46 PM   #5
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Default Re: Maximum practical weight for a book

Quote:
Originally Posted by Celjabba View Post
Medieval antiphonary could easily be a couple feet high/wide or even bigger.
There is an Indian sacred "book" on about a thousand marble slabs, but it may be stretching the definition of book a bit ...
Materials will be an important variable. If the Bible I have right here had gold pages rather than paper, it would mass over 150 pounds. And I'm certain somebody somewhere has had a Bible printed on a million dollars worth of gold foil just because they could.
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Old 06-10-2017, 02:55 PM   #6
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Default Re: Maximum practical weight for a book

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anders View Post
Is there a limit to how much a book can weigh and still function as a book? Assume that it's made for humans.
You need two definitions here:
"book"
and
"function"

Does it have to be man-portable? Does it have to be holdable in one hand? Two hands? Is using a stand or neck strap OK? Does the reader have to be able to see the entire page (or two pages) without turning their head?
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Old 06-10-2017, 03:13 PM   #7
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Default Re: Maximum practical weight for a book

I just weighted a couple books.
My facsimile of Champollion "principes generaux de l'ėcriture sacrée Égyptienne " is a bit over 2.5 kg.
(paper, 34 x 22 x 9 cm)
A leather bound antiphonary is 10kg.
(vellum, about 50 x 30 x 10 cm)
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Old 06-10-2017, 03:50 PM   #8
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Default Re: Maximum practical weight for a book

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
You need two definitions here:
"book"
and
"function"

Does it have to be man-portable? Does it have to be holdable in one hand? Two hands? Is using a stand or neck strap OK? Does the reader have to be able to see the entire page (or two pages) without turning their head?
The book has to be man-portable and the pages are made from vellum. Using a stand or neck strap is allowed. The reader may turn their head to see the entire page.
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Old 06-10-2017, 05:10 PM   #9
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Default Re: Maximum practical weight for a book

For reference, I am 175cm tall, and my arms are about 66 cm long from armpit to end of my middle finger. I'm pretty much "GURPS Average Modern Human" height, which is convenient!

For a generic SM 0 human, I think your limits are about 35cm wide, 45cm tall, and 9.5cm thick. This monstrosity would be up to 14kg depending on fineness of the vellum/parchment - cruder the material, heavier the book and also the less pages - but the tougher the individual pages. I think your low end for vellum is around the 8kg end, this is the finest stuff using the hides of unborn calves. I'm not sure you can get big enough sheets to make this monster book, however.

For comparison, here's some other weights if using other material:
Tissue Paper: 3.74kg
"onionskin" paper: 5.4kg
20lb bond ("standard" printing paper): 12kg
65lb bond (cheap greeting card cardstock): 39kg

I'm digging out my old material to find out how much DATA that is. Next post!

Testing done to derive these figures:

My "Dinosaurs: A Complete World History" is 26cm x 35.5cm x 3cm and weighs 1.8kg. It's my largest book as far as height and width go (I have some that are quite a bit thicker, such as "Grays Anatomy", which is 7cm thick and yet still a paperback, also shorter and narrower).

A little experimentation with my big books suggests I could juggle a book 36 cm wide (one that opens up to 72cm-ish), and perhaps as tall as 40-45cm, and still turn the pages, without the use of a shoulder strap. But I would want a strap :P

At 7cm thick, my "Grays Anatomy" may be nearing the thickest possible for me to handle easily - 8cm may be my real limit. I have lady hands though; I asked my partner to test it out and he figures he could handle up to about 11 cm "before a desktop would become mandatory".

Certainly if I stack my "C# in a nutshell" with "Grays Anatomy" (total thickness 12.5cm) I need DX checks to hold one of them open or turn pages. The thickness one can handle, based on our sample of two people, seems directly related to the length of ones palm. :)

The 1.8kg dinosaur book I can handle open in (both) my arms and reading from while standing. I don't like it - it would tire or strain my arms, and I wouldn't want to do so for more than 10-15 minutes. I'm also about ST 7 :D (at least for arm strength) and that's something that really should scale with ST, or BL.

I would generally recommend BL/4 as a limit for a "standing around reading for extended periods", at least without a strap, but 2xBL for brief references. These values should be calculated from Arm ST - if you have Weak Arms or Extra Arm ST, it will affect what you can read from without supports. A strap would probably halve effective weight for this purpose (but never for general Encumbrance).

Putting the book on a stand would remove the weight/ST issues, and means that practical thickness could probably go up to twice as much, as you could use two hands to manipulate pages.
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Old 06-10-2017, 05:42 PM   #10
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Default Re: Maximum practical weight for a book

So, I found my copy of the old Omniscient Eye column "How Heavy Is Dense Reading?" from Pyramid Vol.2 June. I think this is Matt Riggsby's work? It's unattributed.

The density of handwritten text varies wildly across the medieval and renaissance periods, but the article suggests about 3000-4000 words per square meter of writing area as the median.

The quick solution is to then use the words/kg column. I'm picking the 1090 gospels from the table in that article as a model, since it has a words/m^2 of 3425.26, right smack in the middle of the range. This gives a words/kg of 21,007.22; assuming a mass of 8kg, this is 168,057.76 words.

The more detailed solution is actually breaking down the writing area; this requires a pagecount. Not really knowing the thickness of the vellum/parchment, I'm going back to that 1090 gospels. It has 169 leaves (sheets of parchment) and is 5.24cm thick. Subtracting 1cm of thickness to account for wooden covers, this gives 0.25mm of thickness per leaf.

Going back to the 9.5cm thick monstrosity book, subtract 1 cm for covers, we have 8.5cm for the leaves. Dividing by 0.25mm per leaf gives 340 leaves.

This gives a writing surface area of 35cm ✕ 45cm ✕ 340 leaves ✕ 2 sides = 1,071,000 cm^2, or 107.1 m^2.

At 3,500 words per m^2, that's a massive 374,850 words, over twice the "simply" derived value. I think the difference here is properly accounting for cover thickness, but perhaps I made a giant error.

For comparison, a 128-page 3e GURPS book is nominally 100,000 words.
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Last edited by Bruno; 06-10-2017 at 06:58 PM. Reason: I can't spell Riggsby apparently. Sorry :(
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