#62

My step dad always wheels out this story about how I asked him…

a) If I fired a gun and there was nothing in the way would it go all the way round the world and hit me in the back of the head
b) If I was on a boat and jumped really really high would I land further back on the boat from where I jumped

…the point of the wheeling out being “don’t kids say stupid things” but I still contend these are good questions and he is just still ashamed that he couldn’t answer them.

#64

he just laughed at me and then used it against me for the next 27 years

#66

The answer to the first question is “no”. No matter how big the gun, and no matter what type of bullet you’re using, all bullets start to slow down once fired.

Second question, though - probably!

1 Like
#67

yeah I know

#68

Alright, Lou or Andy from Little Britain.

God, I hate that show.

#70

power rangers innit

1 Like
#71

They are good questions. Contrary to what @ninetyeightytwo says the answer to the first one is definitely “possibly, it depends on how fast you fire it”. Even with air resistance there is a theoretical velocity that would make it do exactly that. Pretty fast though.

As for the second one I think the answer is “Yes”, but I’m not confident about it. If it is then the answer is yes however high you jump.

1 Like
#73

this has reminded me - whenever kids in school talked about getting their playstation chipped down the market so they could play pirated/copied games - I thought this involved taking a hammer or other implement and chipping/removing bits off the console

2 Likes
#74

one april fools day when i was young my parents told me that there had been a mistake when i was named, and there was already an older boy with my name, so i had to pick a new one. strung me along for a while, i was devastated.

6 Likes
#75

can anyone work out what it would be?

#76

Well the orbital velocity at the earth’s surface is something like 18000 mph, way beyond any existing gun. And as ninetyeightytwo said there’s air resistance to factor in there too so the initial velocity would be higher than that, much higher, although I have no idea how much.

1 Like
#77

Just remembered that my Nan told me Waltzing Matilda was the Australian National anthem and I believed it until I was about 15

2 Likes
#79

I used to consider a player in Subbuteo who had been flicked off the pitch to be offside.

1 Like
#80

I Thought that the place where commentators sit was first invented at Highfield road and that’s why it was called the Coventry box

9 Likes
#81

I was convinced my Mum’s friend Diana was Lady Diana. For quite a long time.

#82

I thought my cousin wrote sloop john b and that there was a wolf under my bed

3 Likes
#83

That i could jump out of a plane and stand on something else like a piece of board on the way down until i was a couple metres off the ground and then simply jump off the piece of board to the ground and i’d be perfectly fine. Sadly never got to test my theory.

That me and my two pals who played football near my house could beat Swindon FC (who were bottom of the table at the time)

2 Likes
#85

thought the future was going to be better

1 Like
#86

I think the thing with the second question is whether you could genuinely jump vertically without retaining your forward momentum caused by friction between you and the boat.

#89

That the blue P signs at the side of trunk roads stood for ‘Pee stop’.