Cow tipping myth debunked
Scientists at the University of British Columbia in Canada have investigated the physics of cow tipping and concluded that the force required to actually tip a cow means it's pretty unlikely that anyone could ever really do this.
Here's the maths...
Force = (m g cosθ b)/(a + b)
Where:
m = mass of the cow = 682 kgs
g = gravitational force = 9.81 m/s^2
θ = angle of the lever = 66 degrees
a = length of the lever above the centre of mass = 0.79m
b = length of the lever below the centre of mass = 0.79m
So,
Force = (682 x 9.81 x cos66o
1360 newtons of force requires 2.07 people to exert it, if you assume that each person weighs 67kgs and can push their own bodyweight.
1 comment:
Glad someone cleared that up. I've been very suspicious of it since I first heard it, especially since no-one has ever claimed a successful cow-tipping venture.
Cows, on the other hand, have a shared belief that three or four times a year, usually in the warmer months, drunk unfamiliar humans will stagger across their paddock at night shrieking and falling in cow poo, before running off when a large bored cow is mistaken for a ferocious charging bull.
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