If an object weighing between 17 (hen) to 41 (tom) pounds was dropped from an altitude of, let’s say, 2,000 ft., what would be it’s velocity when it landed on the Earth.
I’d definitely think it would reach terminal velocity after falling that far and this site says that “A chicken’s terminal velocity is 144 meters per second.” This is 322 miles per hour.
I suspect the terminal velocity of a frozen de-plucked chicken is higher.
Need more info.
European or African?
Or more seriously, shape and density.
Lots of things will reach terminal velocity over such a drop. If we assume a spherical critter of roughly unit density it is easier. A feathered critter flapping about is arbitrarily messy. Especially when it hits.
Birds may be significantly less than unit density in full feather. Drag coefficient isn’t going to be easy. In the limit the dang thing might actually fly. For limited meanings of “fly”.
Just to set an upper bound, if there were no air resistance, the time to hit the ground would be \sqrt{\frac{2h}{g}}, where h is the distance (2000 ft) and g is the earth’s gravitational acceleration (9.8 m/s2). That equals 11.1 seconds. The final velocity would then be g*t = 245 mi/hr.
Given that the terminal velocity of a human sky diver is 120-180 mph (depending on orientation), the TV of a chicken, plucked or otherwise, is surely much less than 120 mph.
That’s one way of solving it. The other, which I would have used (but I’m not claiming it is easier) would be via conservation of energy: potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy, so
mgh = .5m * sq(v)
The m cancels out, and the remaining equation can be solved for v.
Just for the record, suppose it was a live turkey.
I strongly advocate using consistent units. Mixing ft, m/s2, seconds and mi/hr is a mess.
Higher, surely? It’s drag force due to friction that determines the terminal velocity, and since the chicken has a more nearly spherical shape than the skydiver we would expect a lower drag force and so a higher terminal velocity.
TV is a function of drag force and the object’s weight. A chicken may be much more spherical than a person, but the chicken also weighs a lot less, i.e. the earth isn’t pulling it down so hard. If you drop an apple and a grape from 1000 feet, the apple will hit ground far sooner. A watermelon will beat the apple handily; it will also look far more awesome when it hits.
Also, for objects in this size range, the primary components of drag force are the increased pressure on forward-facing surfaces and decreased pressure on rear-facing surfaces. Viscous drag (what most people think of as friction) doesn’t start to dominate until you get into the size range of airborne particulate matter, i.e. things a fraction of a millimeter across.
Now we get to fully incalculable. It’ll be flailing and flapping like mad. And maybe tumbling.
As @Francis_Vaughan presciently noted before your clarification:
As a general matter birds are “designed” with fairly low drag coefficients. Flightless birds whose anatomy has been destroyed re-purposed by human breeding less so.
I know that domestic chickens don’t exactly fly in a sustained way, but they haven’t forgotten how. They can flee via flight up into trees and flap/glide in a controlled way back to the ground. Just not fly around the neighborhood.
When faced with a flight situation do domestic turkeys try to fly, and fail, or do they plummet in a panic more like a sheep or human might?
Now all bets are off if the bird is a wild turkey, not a domestic one. Those unequivocally can fly a lot better than domestic chickens, albeit not as sustained as e.g. a sparrow.
The definitive documentary on this issue gives the answer:
“The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement!”
— Les Nesmond
“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”
— Arthur Carlson
Which was, I’m pretty sure, the impetus for the OP’s slyly titled question.
Wild turkeys can fly just fine. Not sure they’d be able to control their descent from 2000 feet but they’d give it a good shot for sure.
Yep; they fly. Not great, not for long distances, but they do. They’re a commonplace in much of the US.
I spent some time trying to find vids about domestic turkey flight. I failed; it was all breathless excitement (or gotchas) about wild turkeys.
I hope someone else can have greater success with vids answering the Q of whether / how well the domestic raised-for-Butterball kind can fly.
A few times when walking in the woods with our dogs very early in the morning we’ve startled roosting turkeys and they’ve flown down to the ground so they could run away. It’s a very scary moment.
Here’s a story about live turkeys dropped from a plane at 500 feet:
Apparently an annual event. During the one year cited 2 of the 12 turkeys dropped died on impact. From the article:
While the turkeys usually spread their wings and glide to a landing, some are apparently confused and try to flap their wings. Instead of floating, they fall. Out of a dozen turkeys that were dropped during the 2016 festival, two reportedly died on impact.
You mean from the 1970’s?
Oh sorry, I thought you wrote jive turkey.
You all are going to let this slide by without any comment?
They had half a right idea. Density, not weight, is what matters. Assuming constant shape and surface smoothness. As they mostly addressed.
Yes, in a vacuum the proverbial anvil & feather fall identically. But we’re not talking about vacuums.
In our atmosphere a cannonball (sphere of iron) will beat a grape (almost sphere of more or less water) by a readily-detectable smidgen. And beat a beachball by a hugely obvious amount.
My bottom line ...
Your point?
Considering who posted that, I see a smidgen of sloppy terminology, not fundamental error or sneaky deadpan BS. Then again, it might have been deadpan BS and your BS detector is better than mine. 