"Or a leftover flying frozen Butterball."
Had to chuckle at your comment, it brought this story back to mind.
" Sometimes it really does take a rocket scientist
Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch 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 hurtled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's backrest 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.
NASA responded with a one-line memo:
"Thaw the chicken.""
Thanks for posting that. I'll be chuckling to myself about it for the rest of the day.
(I hate to mention mythbusters twice in one thread, but...)
They tested the "chicken cannon" story by building a chicken cannon and firing both frozen and thawed chickens at airplane windshields. They found no difference in damage between thawed or frozen chickens. At that kind of speed, kinetic energy is all that matters.
LOL. That's the story that inspired my comment :)
For video on the effects check out reruns or DVDs of Mythbusters. They had great fun with this.
Might matter at train speeds. But it's a minor effect at jet aircraft speeds.
At one time they used live birds. Then the ASPCA made them anesthetize them. I knew an aircraft structure engineer that had participated in both sorts of tests. He said the high speed film of the live bird tests were rather amusing, as the birds seemed to try to slow down as they left the "cannon", although it could have been an illusion due to the relative wind flaring out their wings.