

| Subject: | Re: is anyone going to roast a turkey in the van? |
| From: | Richard A Jones |
| Date: | Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:12:36 -0700 |
About 30 years ago the Journal of Irreproducible Results (http://www.jir.com/home.html) had a wonderful report of a college physics lab exercise--cooking a turkey by the transformation of kinetic energy to thermal energy. The students were to measure how long to cook the turkey by running it up a 10 story college building and dropping it out the window. At the pavement, the kinetic energy is tranformed to thermal, and voila!, the turkey cooks-- a little bit. How many trips are needed? Well, the Vanagon is a perfect vehicle++ to adapt this method to. Let the kinetic energy of the Vanagon be transfered to a turkey hanging on a string. In giving the Vanagon's energy to the turkey, some is transformed to thermal and the turkey starts to cook. "Over the river and through the woods...." is probably about far enough to repeat the above transfer scenario to cook the turkey for Grandma. ++A more modern vehicle such as a Porsche Cayenne, travelling above 125 miles per hour (200 km per hour) could transfer much more energy in a single hit to the turkey, but would probably introduce undesired side effects such as the pulverization of the bird. Plus, no Porsche owner would think of getting a smudge on the front of his car. I waited until today to post this--after all the turkeys were cooked--because I didn't want anybody to get hurt.... ;-) Richard
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