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[nenjin]

It's not out of the realm of possibility. Especially when they're fired with a powerful enough charge. All it takes is the right angle of deflection, and you've got a 100 pound perfectly smooth cruise missile. The Pinball analogy is actually pretty apt.

[EveryZig]

I would think a cannonball would just bury itself in a dirt hill. Is that harder to do than it sounds?

[Peewee]

youtu.be/BJY45bADSqQ

Apparently not...

Remember that the bomb range's location probably wasn't really chosen with cannons in mind.

[Powder Miner]

... ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ...
Mythbusters accidentally the insanity-physics-destruction.

[Itnetlolor]

It's not out of the realm of possibility. Especially when they're fired with a powerful enough charge. All it takes is the right angle of deflection, and you've got a 100 pound perfectly smooth cruise missile. The Pinball analogy is actually pretty apt.

Momentum, angles, and a missed shot hitting houses.

It seems Mythbusters just proved the myth of Angry Birds confirmed.

It must've flown at a low angle and bounced off a series of small angles to go the distance it went.

EDIT:
Regarding my statement, I may be wrong. Angry Birds, regardless of velocity either obliterate or topple the surfaces they touch; the cannon ball went through them.

Myth Busted.

[noodle0117]

Lol, Dublin at Tassajara Creek was where I used to live.
Hope my old home didn't get damaged.

[nenjin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycoW_Mf3_DM&feature=player_embedded

News conference with Adam and Jamie. Audio quality is terrible, and this is probably the most serious and least goofy Adam has ever been in his life.

Their initial guess it that the accident was the result of muzzle lift of the cannon. Muzzle lifts a few degrees and the 30 pound cannon ball goes from a 90 degree impact angle to something like 40 to 50 degrees and proceeds to shoot over the burm and into someone's lap.

The cannon is a one-off they had specially made for the show, and they've used it before. Apparently, this was a calibration test to see if the muzzle velocity of their cannon matched the muzzle velocity of a Civil War-era cannon. While doing this test, the target was missed, calamity ensued.

One would think that having used this cannon before, they're aware of what its capable of, particularly muzzle lift which has to be controlled for to get any accuracy. Ironically, the myth they were going to test (cannon balls through castle walls or something) was going to take place at a different site. They were just using Alameda for testing.

[Powder Miner]

They were testing cannonballs through walls?








...Confirmed?

[Necro910]

There, the 6-inch projectile bounced in front of a home on quiet Cassata Place, ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs and blasted through a bedroom, where a man, woman and child slept through it all - only awakening because of plaster dust.
The ball wasn't done bouncing.
It exited the house, leaving a perfectly round hole in the stucco, crossed six-lane Tassajara Road, took out several tiles from the roof of a home on Bellevue Circle and finally slammed into the Gill family's beige Toyota Sienna minivan in a driveway on Springvale Drive.

Man, fuck whatever experiment they were working on, they've found a cannonball made of flubber.  The damn thing went on a rampage.

Holy shit that's amazing.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Wow, I didn't know mythbusters were based out of SF and... Dublin? Dublin is like 20 minutes away from me.

The fact that Mythbuster's firing range is right down the road amuses me. Glad no one was hurt though.

[Yoink]

Fucking HFS that is dwarfy... Although of course, I'm really glad it didn't get truly dwarfy, as in, hurting anyone.
Amazing that those people slept through it as a cannonball tore straight through their home. I like how the thing smashed through so much property, and still managed to have a heap of near-misses without harming anyone.
I'm going to have to start watching this show again now, I have no idea why I stopped.

[sneakey pete]

If they were testing its muzzle velocity they'd have been filming it with a high speed camera, would be pretty quick to determine if it was a muzzle tilting up.

I can see how it would have happened to i guess. I fthey were firing it into water barrels, they'd be packed up against that hill. tilts up 5 degrees, misses barrels, skims surface of hill and uses it as a launch pad and away it goes.

[Simmura McCrea]

It took me until Kael's post to realise they weren't in Ireland.

[Telgin]

I suppose it was bound to happen eventually that the Mythbusters would end up nearly killing some people.  I'm extremely relieved to hear that they didn't actually hurt anyone.

They go through a fairly substantial effort to maintain safety, but after this I imagine that they will be doubly careful for a while.

And is it terrible that I was wondering more about the future of the show than what damage they caused?

[Grakelin]

What I want to know is why an entire family of three was fast asleep at 4:15 pm.