(Roy) wrote in message .. .
I have heard on numerous occasion that a penny thrown off the top
observation tower of thr Empire State building can hit the ground with
enough force to crack a 6" concrete slab. I used to believe this
statement when I was a kid, but have a hard time buying it as fact
now. I just can't see it being fact, and see it more of an old wives
type tale. I don;t really think you could throw a penny that hard and
far enough to make it reach out sufficiently to clear the lower floors
stepped out structure anyhow.

When I used to work for a living,we had a hangers airconditioning unit
get a bullet hole in it. It was highly unlikely someone shot the AC
from a aircraft, but down the road was a pretty bad section of town
and gunshots could often be heard. We figured a shot was fired in the
air and it came down and went through the AC units fan blade and
compressor housings top.
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Mythbusters on History Channel did this just a few weeks ago. They
figured out the terminal velocity of a penny wasn't enough to hurt
much, modified a staple gun to shoot pennies at the terminal velocity,
didn't even raise much of a welt when one of them finally tried it on
himself. On the other hand, they showed the ledge 5 stories down from
the top of the Empire State Building, it had quite a few pennies on
it. Kind of makes you wonder what some people are thinking...

If you guys haven't caught Mythbusters, it's about debunking urban
myths. Some of the stuff that's shown so far has been about the guy
in the lawn chair and the weather balloons, making a cannon out of a
tree trunk(it worked), getting painted gold all over ala James Bond
movie, peeing on the third rail, flushing flammable liquids and
getting an exploding toilet and one of my favorites, the exploding
frozen biscuits in the hot car(they did). I missed the episode about
the JATO unit and the Chevy. It's on Fridays. Loads of metalworking
content(lots of ballistic gelatin, too).

Stan