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Having built potato cannons in my high school days, I half-hoped that this article would be about launching a potato to near-space via a launch. Pretty cool, re
by keehun 11y ago
Having built potato cannons in my high school days, I half-hoped that this article would be about launching a potato to near-space via a launch. Pretty cool, regardless!
- pavel_lishin 11y agoWould a potato even survive the sort of acceleration required? Would you just end up delivering mashed potatoes to near-space?
- TrevorJ 11y agoIf the potato came apart early enough then the drag would increase exponentially and you'd just have potato mist a few meters above ground level.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoI was thinking something similar, however if you want the potato to reach 100,000' though a ballistic launch it would have to come out of the spud gun pretty quickly. Lets see, converting 100,000' to SI units that is about 30,500 meters. 1/2at^2 for distance, solving for time that is about 78 seconds (sqrt(30500 * 2 * 10)) and using at as velocity that is 780 m/second at launch (assuming no air resistance etc, this is just for fun) 780 m/second converting back to imperial is 2,560 ft/second or 1,745 mph. Basically supersonic (expected) about mach 2 at sea level. Probably be mashed potato as soon as it left the tube :-)