Moving the world through packaging

[00:00:01] >> Today we're at the open house of the Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design. We started this open house to be able to interact more with local companies because here at Virginia Tech we have had this research center since 1976 mainly focusing on pallets, but we started to focus on packaging since 2010 and all we felt that a fair amount of local companies don't really know that Virginia Tech has this resource and that we have students that are specifically trained in packaging that can help them alleviate some of their problems. [00:00:34] Most people don't think about the complexity that goes into the miracle that happens if you walk into a store the things that you are looking for are on the shelf and the series of events that takes place behind the scenes to make that happen is really quite remarkable. [00:00:52] You don't really see it in like daily life like how easily things can break or see things catastrophically fail. And so I remember when I broke my pallet here after a couple days of being here it was super loud and super surprising but it was awesome because like having to set up that test takes a while of learning about the different mechanics and the things that go behind it it all just kind of clicked the second that that kind of happened one of the professors here Dr Bouldin that helps lead in the lab he was able to like talk to me about all these different things that come with the breaking of the palette and it really just like made all of my wood mechanics classes all make sense, all at once.