Science both sides of the Atlantic !

Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist!! (true story reported in the press here )..


Scientists at Rolls Royce in the UK built a gun specifically to launch dead chickens at the windshields of airliners and military jets all travelling at maximum velocity.

The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.

American 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 American 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 Americans sent Rolls Royce the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the British scientists for suggestions.


You're going to love this ( maybe not if you're American ! )......


Rolls Royce responded with a one-line memo:


"Defrost the chicken."

Cheers

Ian

8 Comments

Hi Laura

by IAN MC - 2014-01-05 04:01:43

Great to hear from you and I hope you are well !

No intention to offend ; honest !

Ian

Bravo!

by ohiolaura - 2014-01-05 04:01:45

From 1 American, I am not offended,very much enjoyed the read,thanks!!
Laura

Ah, Brit press got...

by donr - 2014-01-05 06:01:13

...schnookered again!

I first heard that joke back in the 1960's - but it was NASA offering advice to un-named Brit Aerospace Engineers.

Ranks right up there w/ the Polish jokes & Italian jokes common in the US that can be attached to any nationality or adversarial group.

I once upon a time made an offer to a bunch of undergrad engineers in a course I was teaching on weapons - interior & exterior ballistics. This class consisted of guys from every ethnic background I could think of - including a distant relative of a man named Principe (anyone remember him?). One day we got a bit off topic & the subject of ethnic jokes came up. MY challenge to them was to bring in an ethnic joke that was 1) fit for a preacher to use during a sermon & 2) NOT generic & was specific to Germans. I figured that was safe, since I am descended from a German Shepherd who lived somewhere between Dresden & the Polish border back in the mid-1800's.

I'm still waiting.

BTW: We have a tornado proof door on our interior shelter that is solid sheet steel plate. It is, in reality, a prison door made in a neighboring town. It will withstand a piece of 2X4 lumber shot from an air cannon at 51 ft per sec w/o perforating the door. Weighs 250 lbs, hangs on three ball-bearing hinges & is so well balanced you can open it by pulling or pushing on it w/ a little finger.

Don

Wait no longer !

by IAN MC - 2014-01-05 07:01:33

Don

Man walking past the olympic stadium carrying a long case is collarred by a guard. "Are you a pole-vaulter?" the guard asks The man replies "No, I'm German actually; but how did you know my name was Walter ? "

I know lots of others that either i) a preacher wouldn't use or ii) would upset Inga so I'll leave it at that !

Cheers

Ian

Ian - Good one!

by donr - 2014-01-05 11:01:34

I knew one that a preacher could use, but not in Germany.

Unfortunately, My class didn't even know ANY. But the Italian kid knew a ton of Italian jokes.

Don

Academics.

by clockman1 - 2014-01-06 06:01:01

Just to add a quick line to all this.
When I went to college to study Horology many years ago, the course was mainly stuffed with retired teachers, and academic types filling in the hours of their retirement by attempting to fix some very unlucky little clocks. Most of them with a couple of exceptions, I wouldn't have let within 50 yards of a clock of mine, brilliant minds but seriously unco-ordinated hands and eyes which managed to dispatch a few smaller clocks to their final resting places,but then, I was never strong on theory but good at practical skills which kept me busy in Horology for the rest of my working days. Horses for courses I suppose, we all have different talents, there's room for all of us.
Keep warm and vertical.
clockman1

Forgive me Don

by BillMFl - 2014-01-06 08:01:40

But what color is your fur? And what was the temperament of the German Shepherd you are descended from? The one I used to live with did not like strangers and had to be relegated to the basement when we had company. I hope this joke passes the litmus test. haha Oh, and I too am a retired engineer. Many of our jokes were aimed at the many Phd Indian Engineers in the electronics field who had tremendous theoretical knowledge but didn't know one end of a screwdriver from the other.

For BillMFI: Classic Black...

by donr - 2014-01-06 09:01:25

..w/ a brown spot above each eye, etc, etc.

Doesn't qualify - it's funny only to English speakers who call that dog a German Shepherd. Translation comes out as a big shoulder shrug & puzzled look by the German speaker. They call the beast ein Schaeferhund - which literally means "Shepherd's dog."

We had one once upon a time that literally hated poodles. Let her see a poodle & her ears turned to spring steel, she stopped breathing & every muscle in her body quivered. You had about 2 seconds to grab her or she became a rocket on the shortest intercept course for the Poodle. Not a pretty picture.

Then there was our Daughter's Schnauzer. GeeVee had a fixation on anything that moved on 4 legs. One day she saw our neighbor's Shepherd calmly walking down the street in front of the neighbor's house. GeeVee took off like a rocket, Heck-bent for an assault on a hated enemy. BIIIIIG mistake. She caught it & was overmatched in size, strength & most importantly - tooth size. That Shepherd had her grossly beaten in Tooth to tail ratio. The only one who profited from that encounter was Daughter's Vet to the tune of $600 for the repair job.

I know exactly what you mean about the dichotomy between great theorists & bench-savvy engineers. I went to a "Cow-College' for an MS in EE for Uncle Sam's Army. Specifically - NW State Univ, in Las Cruces, NM. Most of the undergrad EE students were working their way through by doing alternate semesters at school & working as bench techs at the Physical Science Lab run by NMSU for the Army's White Sands Missile Range, a mere 30 miles across the mountains. Those guys could fix anything that used electrons. Our Dept head cut his teeth during WW-II at MIT's Radiation Lab, designing & building radars, etc. so he was a real hands on kind of guy.

This place was so "Cow-College" that just the summer I got there they changed their name from NM A&M to NMSU. We shared classrooms w/ the students from the Ag part of the school & very frequently had to kick the cow flops out of the way to get to the chairs in the classrooms. The Dept of EE had ties to Goddard of Rocketry fame & our most distinguished grad at that time was a guy named Paul Klipschorn, who came by one day & I had a chance to meet the man.

Ah, but this was in the days when glowing glass vacuum tubes ruled the world. The transistor was not yet anything other than an idle curiosity. The yr before, 1962, they started teaching their first class on transistors to undergrads. In 1963, a Motorola rep came by to talk to the school's chapter of the newly named IEEE. He brought a sample of their new transistor radio that had -GASP! - 9 transistors in it. A modern marvel of technology. Our #1 Son got his EE degree in 1982 & he & I could not talk to one another - without a translator. For him, tubes existed only in the museum.

Don

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