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Mythbusters and Eclipse

Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2015 6:57 am
by Solar
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The Eclipse was utilized for their season 18 "Accidental ammo" episode to determine if a rock that is kicked up by a lawn mower has as much energy as a .357 bullet. The .357 acheived 60 degrees and a 42 gram rock launched from the Eclipse acheived 66 degrees at 800 psi with paper towels as a sabot.

Re: Mythbusters and Eclipse

Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2015 12:16 pm
by matti
I saw that episode, noticed the Eclipse too :D Nice work :wink:

Re: Mythbusters and Eclipse

Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2015 10:47 am
by Ragnarok
I saw the episode, but was very disappointed by the inaccuracy of the physics they were quoting.

They used the height of the swing as a direct indicator of kinetic energy, but ballistic pendulums measure momentum (if they'd even used the pendulum correctly, which they did not), so the result would have to be converted using the mass of the projectile .
I know the whole thing was supposed to be an eye-candy experiment (they could already have determined the rock's KE trivially, from its known mass and velocity), but that they perpetuated such a wildly inaccurate conclusion because of it annoys me.