Coffee Klatch

This morning I came across a posting written by someone who is fed up (literally and figuratively) by the moral superiority that many vegetarians manifest. Especially when being taken out to eat by a friend who likes a good steak. He’s being funny and making a point at the same time.

His plan: find some vegetarian who really irritates people every time you all want to go out to eat. Then “sponsor” them by eating THREE TIMES as much meat as you normally would. In their name.
If you want to read more, click on the image below. (Note: The site has a bit of vulgar language, so if you’re bothered by that, please don’t go read it.)

This is a classic Physics question that shows up in many forms on high school physics exams. The question goes as follows: A gun is aimed at a monkey sitting in a tree. Exactly as the trigger is pulled, the monkey drops from the tree. Ignoring air resistance, where should you aim the gun so as to hit the monkey?

Know the answer? It’s “right where he was sitting.”

The reason is that gravity is working on both the bullet and monkey equally. If there were no gravity, then the bullet would travel in a straight line and the monkey would not fall anywhere. Add gravity, which causes downward acceleration at a rate of 32 ft/sec/sec, both the bullet and the monkey fall at the same rate.

Sounds illogical, but that’s the way the world works. Of course, if the monkey shaped his body differently as he fell, he would increase or decrease his wind resistance, thus changing the answer. Visit Everything2.com for more discussion of why this is so.

When I was in Physics class in high school, my teacher had a little metal contraption that was mostly a spring and a rod. There were two balls that both had holes drilled through the center. When you pulled the rod back against the spring and latched it, thus “cocking” the machine like a gun, one ball was put onto the back end of the rod and the other was placed in front of the rod. When you “unlatched” it, the rod shot forward, knocking the front ball straight forward while pulling out of the back ball, allowing it to drop. On a classroom countertop over a hard floor, it was easy to hear that both balls hit the ground at exactly the same time.

Go figure!

Current music: Zen Breakfast, by Karunesh