Why Stepping On A Lego Hurts So Bad, According To The Smithsonian

We've all been there.

It's dark in the house, and you just wanted to get up and get a glass of water. Alas, the journey is cursed to end in pain, for there lies in the darkness a Lego piece which your foot, by happenstance, eventually made contact with. Yes, the pain is supremely bad, but does it hurt worse than, say, stepping on glass?

("Yes!" many of you are already screaming.) Well, now science says it does.

According to the Smithsonian, there's a reason Legos hurt so bad: it's what they're made of. These little construction toys are created from ABS, an insanely durable type of plastic that can support up to 950 pounds of pressure before they buckle. That's a lot of pressure, but it's not the only reason Legos are so painful. The pointy edges only make things worse, and the fact that our feet contain over 400,000 sensory receptors combined is just the icing on the cake.

In fact, Scott Bell, who broke the world record for the longest walk on hot coals back in 2006, says that walking on Legos is even worse than what he did. The reason? Coals get hot, but they don't transfer that heat well. As long as the person walking on them keeps their feet moving, they're unlikely to receive any serious injuries. Even walking on glass is not as excruciating as Legos, since glass is usually in tiny pieces and can easily shift to accommodate extra pressure.

Legos, on the other hand, do no such thing, making them a serious headache to walk on and step on in the middle of the night.

This new scientific inquiry comes as walking barefoot on Legos faces a puzzling rise in popularity. After a video store in Maine offered The Lego Movie at half price for patrons who would traverse a 12-foot Lego walkway without their shoes, other people began doing them for no reason (quite baffling, if you ask me).

In fact, there's now an official Guinness World Record, with a rather complex history, for who can walk the farthest on Legos. This past January, a YouTuber with the stage name "Brainy Bricks" walked 120 feet on Legos, only to be surpassed a couple of months afterwards by one of the members of trick-shot troupe Dude Perfect at a little under 147 feet walked. But yet again, another person set a new record at just over 1,264 feet shortly after.

Here's where it gets real bizarre, though. Brainy Bricks, covetous of this prestigious world record, walked 2,737 feet on Lego bricks in April, shattering the previous records (see above video). After the fact, his feet were literally torn open from walking on little plastic bricks. 

And while I don't see the appeal, I think almost anyone who's ever been in a house with Legos can absolutely relate.  

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I like talking about sci-fi, Star Wars, tech, outer space, and other science-y stuff every Monday.