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Re: dressing up a problem



In 'Tale of a Guinea Pig', [p. 174, ff. Bantam, 1981] Geoffrey Page
tells of having his spitfire pursued in 1944 by a Me-109 near
Lisieux, over France. Page's left leg had become useless due to a
cannon shell fragment, and he was at treetop level, jinking, and

my students would ask 'What's jinking?'

trying to out-turn the German plane. "The Messerschmitt was just on
the edge of a stall when the pilot fired the guns: the recoil slowed

"Was it a horse's stall?"

the plane sufficiently to flick over and strike the trees twenty feet
below."
According to Len Deighton, ['Fighter', Ballantine, 1977, p. 91], the
Me-109 carried 2 cannon, each of which fired 0.138-kg projectiles at
a rate of 520 rounds/minute, with a muzzle velocity of 550 m/s, as
well as two machine guns, each of which fired 0.0128-kg projectiles
at 1100 rounds/min with a muzzle velocity of 750 m/s.

Determine the final velocity of the Messerschmitt if its initial
speed was 36 m/s, and the pilot fired all four guns for 2 seconds.

And perhaps they'd ask 'What's the mass of a standard Me-109?'

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Chuck Britton Education is what is left when
britton@odie.ncssm.edu you have forgotten everything
North Carolina School of Science & Math you learned in school.
(919) 286-3366 x224 Albert Einstein, 1936