Member-only story
Could You Launch a Bowling Ball Into Space Using Black Powder?
Maybe you’ve seen these anvil launching competitions? If not, here’s the basic idea. You get a 100 pound anvil and put it on top of 2 pounds of black powder. Light the powder — BOOM. There goes the anvil up in the air and back into the ground.
Of course How Ridiculous had to try this anvil launching sport with their own unique twist. This includes launch a smaller anvil, a giant rubber band ball and a bowling ball up into the air. Check it out.
You can see right on the thumbnail, they hint that an anvil could maybe go into space. That’s probably just an image to get attention, but it’s a fun question. I think in the video they get the 11 pound bowling ball to go the highest — so there’s a bunch of great physics questions to consider with this event.
How Do You Measure the Launch Height?
With the bowling ball, they claim that after it was launched, it traveled to a height of 383 meters. How did they get that value? I’m not completely sure — but if I had to guess (which…
