https://greem.co.uk/otherbits/jelly.html

Nailing jelly to a wall: is it possible?

We've all heard the old saying "it's like nailing jelly to a wall" to
describe a task that is very difficult or impossible. But is our view
of the difficulty of this task justified? Has anybody actually tried
nailing jelly to a wall? In this experiment I attempt to establish,
one way or the other, the validity of the old proverb.

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Materials

I sourced the following materials from Sainsbury's and Focus.

Hammer, nails, plank, jelly

They are: a 16oz claw hammer, a 200g pack of 3" (75mm) round wire
nails, a selection of 135g packs of Hartley's jelly cubes, and a
plank of wood, dimensions 850x200x18mm (approx. 331/2"x73/4"x3/4"). The
plank of wood will play the part of the "wall". The type of wood, and
its exact dimensions, are not important.

The length of the nails is important. Specifically, the nails should
be longer than the depth of the bowl intended for use as the jelly
mould. This is to enable the nail to go right through the finished
jelly and into the wall without the nail first disapparing into the
jelly.

The picture below shows the proposed jelly mould (an ordinary dessert
bowl) and one of the nails next to it for comparison purposes.

Nail should be longer than bowl depth

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A first attempt

A box of jelly, as purchased from the supermarket, contains twelve
joined "cubes". The orange flavour is shown below. This is
"concentrated" or "neat" jelly; the idea is that water is added to
produce actual jelly. Of course, these cubes are much more viscous
than the diluted mixture produced by adding water. Therefore, it
should be easier to nail the concentrated cubes to the wall than the
actual jelly.

Orange jelly cubes

In fact, the jelly didn't even need a nail to stay on the wall. It
just stuck there. For good measure, I drove a nail through it. The
jelly held in place.

Jelly stuck to the wall Orange jelly nailed to the wall

This is called "cheating".

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Making the jelly

My first attempt being somewhat against the spirit of the proverb, I
decided to repeat the experiment with proper jelly. The procedure for
making jelly from the jelly cubes is documented on the reverse of the
jelly boxes; a summary is given here.

The picture below shows the equipment required: some jelly cubes
(lime this time), a measuring jug, and some boiling water.

Jelly, jug, kettle

Do not eat any of the neat jelly cubes, no matter how nice they look.
They're incredibly sweet and probably addictive; if you eat them all
you won't have any left for the experiment.

Jelly cubes before I'veeaten some Jelly cubes after I'veeaten some

Pour half a pint (284ml) of boiling water into a jug, and add the
cubes. Stab the cubes indiscriminately until they've all dissolved.
Then add another half pint of cold water, so the jug contains a pint
(568ml) of jelly mix.

Given that the intention is that this jelly be nailed to a wall, we
might intuitively get better results if we add less water than
required, in order to give a thicker and presumably sturdier mix.
However, in this experiment the jelly will be prepared according to
the instructions on the packet to ensure a fair test.

Stab the cubes until they've dissolved. Full jug

Pour the jelly mix into whatever is being used for the jelly mould.
In this case, as mentioned before, we are using a simple dessert
bowl. The only restriction on the type of mould used is that its
depth should be less than the length of the nails.

If you reproduce this experiment, you will probably find that there
is an irritatingly small amount of jelly mixture left over in the jug
once the mould is full. Pour this footling amount of jelly into a
glass, and place it in the fridge alongside the bowl. For maximum
confusion, don't tell any of your housemates about it.

Jelly in bowl, and some left over in jug Jelly in fridge

Finally, leave the jelly to set overnight.

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Nailing it to a wall

When the jelly has set, cover it with a plate, upturn the entire
arrangement, and carefully lift the bowl off the jelly. Then realise
that the jelly is still stuck to the bowl. Hit the bowl with a spoon
a few times (to no avail) before attacking the edges of the jelly
with a thin sharp knife to loosen it.

Jelly on a plate

The logical next step would be to pick up the jelly and nail it to
some surface perpendicular to the floor. Unfortunately, the first of
these steps was impossible; trying to pick up the jelly with bare
hands resulted in its partial disintegration. So, I opted for a
compromise; I got the jelly back in the bowl, and upturned it
directly onto the plank, while it was horizontal.

Can't pick up the jelly! Putting the jelly on the plank Jelly on the
plank

With the plank horizontal, I drove a nail through the centre of the
jelly and into the plank.

Me nailing jelly to the plank

I then added a few more nails to hold the jelly in place.
Unfortunately, even with nine nails in it, the jelly was starting to
break around the nails when the plank was tilted.

Jelly with five nails in it Jelly with nine nails in it Close-up of
jelly with nine nails in it Jelly with nine nails in it, falling to
bits

Seeing nothing better to do, I added three more nails at strategic
points. When the plank was tilted, half the jelly broke off
completely and fell to the floor. The weak points seemed to be near
the nails.

Jelly with twelve nails in it

Jelly half fallen off

Jelly half fallen off again

The jelly's structural integrity now having been seriously
compromised, the rest of the jelly followed about half a minute
later. This attempt at nailing jelly to a wall had therefore resulted
in quite a convincing failure.

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But wait...

I suddenly remembered that I had more jelly. The glass into which I
poured the excess from the jug was still sitting in the fridge. I
retrieved it and extricated the jelly. Perhaps a smaller amount of
jelly would nail to the wall easier?

The jelly from the glass

Taking no chances, I not only nailed the jelly to the plank using
five nails, but also added a crescent of eight nails below the jelly
to catch any wayward lumps.

Small piece of jelly nailed to the wall Small piece of jelly nailed
to the wall

This worked for approximately half a minute. Unfortunately, although
the jelly that fell off was briefly caught in the crescent
arrangement of nails, it fell through the gaps after a small amount
of time.

Small piece of jelly breaking up Small piece of jelly breaking up
Small piece of jelly breaking up

Before long, there were only trace amounts of jelly left on the wall.

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Conclusion

Given some jelly mixed according to standard procedures and a
vertical wall, it is not possible to nail the former to the latter
and have it stay there for any significant amount of time.
Furthermore, these experiments were conducted by nailing the jelly to
a horizontal surface which was then gradually tilted. Nailing jelly
to a wall while the wall is vertical is an intractable problem in
itself due to the difficulty in picking up jelly with the hands
without it disintegrating.

Even using many nails to construct a receptacle for the purpose of
catching the jelly, which is not technically "nailing it to the
wall", resulted in failure. This was because the gaps between the
nails afford to the jelly an easy means of egress from the
receptacle.

Further research into the area might involve the nailing to the wall
of a stronger jelly mix. Alternatively, the "wall" could be placed,
nails first, into the jelly while it's setting, to allow the jelly to
set around the nails. Then in the morning the bowl can be removed,
leaving the jelly nailed to the wall.

The old proverb, then, is justified, and the reader may say that an
impossible or near-impossible task is "like nailing jelly to the
wall" safe in the knowledge that the assertion has some scientific
evidence to corroborate it.

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Stuff that's been added afterwards

I conducted this experiment as a little diversion in the lazy few
weeks between finishing my final year exams at university and
graduating, back in June 2005. Since then, there have been various
developments, summarised here as they happen.

26th October 2006: Attention Americans!

What you call "jello", we call "jelly". What you call "jelly", we
call "jam". That's the long and the short of it. However, I've
recently been sent a correction, and I wouldn't be a proper pedant if
I didn't address it. Michael writes on the comments page that
"Jell-O" is in fact a brand name, even though it is often used
generically. He also tells us that the jelly-jam thing isn't so
simple - what they call "jelly" in the US is a gelatin-based food
spread, and what they call "jam" is a fruit preserve, which is also
what we call jam in the UK. So apparently, "jam" means the same thing
in both countries.

5th February 2007

I wrote the above "Attention Americans" update in October. It's now
February, and a link to this page has recently been posted on
boingboing. (That would explain why the page has had so many visitors
in the last three days.) This unexpected publicity has made its mark
on the comments page, particularly in the form of more detail about
the jelly-jello-jam-preserves debate. It turns out that it's a lot
more complicated than I first thought. It's best summarised by Thomas
Farrell and Charlene on the comments page.

Woo yay houpla! 16th February 2007

It's one thing for this page to be linked on a popular website like
boingboing. It's even better to see it on a site I regularly read and
post on, b3ta! They've included it in their latest newsletter. 4000
visits today and counting.

Further research! 31st May 2007

In the above writeup, I concluded that further research might be
necessary to ensure that the jelly stays nailed to the wall. Well, it
turns out that back in February, myscienceproject.org did just that.
Not only have they attempted what suggested in the conclusion about
allowing the jelly to set around the nails, but they've also tried
out some of the suggestions you made on the comments page. They tried
hammering the nails through straws pre-moulded into the jelly,
fortifying the jelly with noodles, banana slices and plastic meshes
and using ballistics gelatin ("used to test the penetrating power of
firearms"), instead of jelly. The experiments had varying degrees of
success.

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This page is copyright 2005 by Graeme Cole. What are you allowed to
do with it? Pfft. Anything within the realms of common sense, really.
I don't want to prescribe rigidly what people can and can't do with
it, so I've decided on a benchmark. It's this: you're allowed to do
with this page anything you wouldn't mind me doing with your cat. So
yes, you can photoshop it for comedy effect, you can copy bits of it
for illustrative purposes and so on, but you can't steal it and pass
it off as your own.