Math question! Mixed with physics

I have a question! Again… I’m trying to make tonight on talk fun. So I am proposing a theoretical question to all the math and physics people.

If you are standing 10 feet from a grenade, how many chickens would you have to cover it with, so that no harm would come to you or anyone near you?

All of them. However you would not have time to do so with the spoon off.

I’m thinking the best thing to do is to form a sphere of chickens, about 5 foot thick, 5 feet from the grenade. You don’t want to “pack” it with more chickens, or else you’ll have chicken shrapnel. You want to cushion it with chickens, and that would release as much energy into expansion before it hits the wall of chickens.

So, short answer is 1850 cubic feet of chicken.

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Excuse me? Plus some fowl language.

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Nothing to see here, resume chick-ing in another thread.

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what kind of chickens? the super meaty kind that McDonalds raises would absorb shrapnel better, but the fluffier wild kind would cushion the blast better. and what kind of grenade: Frag, concussion, or incendiary? those all have very different types of explosions

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Probably fewer if the chickens were frozen…

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Well, if we assume a spherical chicken…

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Frag would be assumed

Assuming your math is correct, how many chickens, roughly, is this?

Chickens with beaks or without?

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Is this relevant? I’m just curious. I mean I could see the shrapnel issue that may cause.

Do the chickens have woody breast syndrome?

Serious question, serious answer:

This question has precedent. The Medal of Honor has been awarded many times to men who have dived onto a grenade to save their comrades.

Say the average Marine is made of 180lbs of rough tough sinewed American manhood, hardened in training, and ready for anything.

The average farm raised chicken is a shadow of his visage; plump, juicy, and covered in feathers, but she still has mass. I’m guessing that an over-factor of 1.33 (that’s 33% more chicken than Marine) will serve as an equivalent mass explosion deterrent. So 180lbs of Marine, is a rough equivalent to 240lbs of thawed chicken atop a grenade.

If the average chicken is about 6 lbs, that’s 40 chickens to stop the shrapnel, but the shock wave will have it’s way. Exploded chicken may still injure the surrounding parties. Beaks, butts, and wing bones could inflict considerable damage.

Increasing the dome of chicken defligrant, would only exacerbate the problem. An added 500 lbs of chicken carcass, would tend to enhance the explosive properties of the grenade; because containment is gunpowder’s great ally.

The best policy is negotiation. Talk to the chickens, learn their concerns, offer them restitution and remuneration. After all, it’s only chicken feed.

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Who on EARTH would leave the spoon off???

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It wouldn’t explode if the spoon was on.

Anybody want to try some chickens that Buffalo Wings come from? Surely it would not take very many Buffalos to cover that gernade.

African or European?

wait, wrong bird…

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I’m using these numbers for the chickens.

https://kendalhillsfarm.ca/blogs/news/what-is-the-volume-of-a-chicken
https://kendalhillsfarm.ca/collections/fowl/products/chicken-whole-fryer-4-5lbs

I’d say about 4189 chickens which would be a 10 feet hemisphere (2094.4 cubic feet) of chickens on the ground surrounding the grenade. The idea being that the energy from the filling would be transferred into velocity of the chickens instead of the velocity of the grenade fragments.

Given the mass of the chickens (9500 kg) relative to the mass of the grenade fragments (220 g) their velocity would be relatively low. Around 24 feet per second based on a guess of 5,000 feet per second for the grenade fragments (guessing 255483 J). The pile of chickens would disperse a lot with those at the top of the pile going about 9 feet upwards and the rest going outwards. It would also deaden the sound significantly.

The qualifier of no harm is very different from survivable. It could be done with vastly fewer chickens if some harm were acceptable like permanent hearing damage and survivable wounds. Either way it’d be really gross. Emotional harm is likely unavoidable. :astonished:

More fun reading.

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I was about to be impressed, and give you a “wow”, and then I scrolled back up and realized it was you. Still impressed, but recognizing how much your OCD had to do with it… :slight_smile: