The burning question whose answer you've all been waiting for has been answered!

[lance_sibley]

This was posted at TrekBBS, and I thought I'd pass it along for all of you Monty Python fans out there:

Estimating The Airspeed Velocity Of An Unladen Swallow

I must say, the author went to a lot of trouble to work this out. Do read right to the bottom of the page - and I mean right to the bottom of the page.

Comments

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

(I guess it was laden then, but how it could carry a thing three times its weight I don't know)

It's a simple matter of weight ratios. A six ounce bird cannot carry a one-pound coconut. ;)

(Though the website says that the average adult European Swallow weighs 20.3 grams, which is less than three-quarters of an ounce. I wonder if that's a typo - it doesn't seem likely, but the footnoted website matches.)

given how far out on a branch it was perched and how much its total weight was. The result was IIRC that if the branch was spun around the point where it connected to the tree then before the bird was flung off the branch it would have about 53 inch-ounces of torque around that connecting point. =P

This sounds like the kind of problem my high school physics teacher used to give us on tests. I don't recall him being a Monty Python fan, but his questions were usually pretty silly.