Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist!!
(True Story)

Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch standard 4 pound dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.

British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US scientists for suggestions.


You're going to love this...

NASA responded with a one-line memo ...........



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-- "Defrost the chicken."

Very funny! I like it! Isn't life itself sometimes just like that as well.

My answer would have have read, "When all else fails, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!", But I guess NASA knew better, and their Memo was to the point. After all they didn't want to confuse the Scientists. :D :D :D

Lee L.

But this was covered on the Mythbusters show awhile back. The total energy transfer is identical between a frozen or thawed chicken when shot out of an air cannon. High speed photography showed that, frozen or thawed, each completely flattened/splattered in about 6 msec after impact. I got the impression that penetration would be identical as well.

I don't mean to take away from the joke though. Sounds like a good idea for further exploration.

Heck... maybe we can get Marshall to make up some chicken-shaped bullets for further testing :)

But this was covered on the Mythbusters show awhile back. The total energy transfer is identical between a frozen or thawed chicken when shot out of an air cannon. High speed photography showed that, frozen or thawed, each completely flattened/splattered in about 6 msec after impact. I got the impression that penetration would be identical as well.

I don't mean to take away from the joke though. Sounds like a good idea for further exploration.

Could be but I'd still suggest a hard cast bullet would penetrate more than a dead soft bullet.

Dan

in my "experiments" *snickers* with my homemade air canon, a hard object always penetrates more, its just able to hold togather better. the energy at impact is the same but the displacement is not.

i do not always trust mythbusters, i know for a fact that someof the things were true that they said they disproved.

Frozen paintball vs. a normal unfrozen paintball...

Sanctioned paintball fields and players with any brains at all will not let you use a frozen paintball unless they get to test it on you first at short (10 feet) range, for what we liked to call "over penetration". This was back in the days of paintball chronograph infancy and thinking that a .68 caliber paintball at 300-320 fps was relatively safe. 280-300fps is safer to those only wearing a T-shirt and pants. The first time you see a frozen paintball go through a 3/8th inch thick piece of plywood is something you tend to remember.

I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be a rocket scientist. It seems that I may just be smarter than a bullet-train scientist though. Who'da thunk it? ;)

Yeah, now that I think about it, total energy transfer doesn't equate to penetration distance either. A 44 mag 240gr hard cast would have the same energy as a jacketed bullet of the same weight and velocity, but penetration can be remarkably different, as we all know. Mythbusters was shooting those chickens into a steel plate (ie immovable object) which made for some interesting high speed photography, but didn't really prove anything. I don't really remember any penetration difference when shot through that airplane body they had, but it wasn't exactly a solid object, and a frozen chicken isn't exactly solid on the inside either.

I still want my own air cannon for further testing, though.

"and a frozen chicken isn't exactly solid on the inside either."

If it's a whole, undressed chicken, then it is. And that's what they realy ought to be testing with, since the birds they hit aren't likely to have their guts removed and cut necks placed... elsewhere :)

Further info here:

http://www.snopes.com/science/cannon.htm