The process is similar to the physics of a pogo stick-using the moments when you spring upward to move. Because the load is oscillating off the body, that means that it’s going to pull you down more at some points than others.” “You have a minor collision with the ground, and you have to push off the other foot to make up for that energy loss. “When you walk, you expend energy, and a large source of that energetic cost comes from when you take a step,” says Ryan Schroeder, a mechanical engineer at the University of Calgary and the study’s lead author. To an unfamiliar eye, it looks like a scale-an extremely loaded one. By counterbalancing two loads of material strung on bamboo, they maneuver manure across rice fields to fertilize their crop, or carry other goods across town. The practice is particularly popular among Vietnam’s Hmong, an ethnic minority spread across mountain villages in Southeast Asia. “Because the pole is made of very flexible bamboo, it makes the shoulder less uncomfortable and lighter.” “The use of bamboo poles is … an important tool for farmers in countryside and traveling salespeople in the city,” says Van Vinh Hac, a researcher at Thái Nguyên University of Medicine and Pharmacy and a co-author of the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Recently, a team of international researchers studied the heavy-lifting villagers, to see exactly what made the thin bamboo such a strong device. Rather, these villagers manage to bear their mighty loads using just a slender bamboo pole, which works far better than any nylon backpack. The weight they carry is not through any feat of strength, or thanks to some high-tech apparatus. Age is not a factor: It’s a common sight to see both younger people and some of the eldest members of these communities shouldering loads as heavy as they are. In some of the rural mountain villages of Vietnam, locals can lift remarkably heavy loads.
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