We Shattered Silly Putty and Hit a Gong with a Supersonic Baseball

Did anyone else notice the mirror move BEFORE impact??

Evan Lachmanec

You should shoot a ballistic dummy labs torso!!

LilyFox

I have just now seen that video and the results were truly awesome! I've had the impression, that the gong just moved a tiny bit from the impact, but was then blown away from the shockwave of the canon. It would be really interesting, to set up a second metal plate in front of the gong with a hole in it, so just the baseball would hit the gong, not the shockwave. This might actually be a really interesting setup for a lot of impact-related data.

David Sallge

I was unable to suggest this earlier but I have a suggestion for any future baseball canons, Since I'm Canadian I MUST throw down the gauntlet and challenge a baseball to a hockey puck Or even better, an array of hockey pucks in a dartboard shape loosely held together for target practice. Maximum mayhem, accuracy is key. Chaos ensues!

There’s a chicken cannon at SWRI also, in San Antonio TX. If you’re super bored, SWRI puts on a fantastic Penetration Mechanics course (3 days if I remember correctly) to cover the technical side of impacts (they skip the interior ballistics, it’s more about calculating penetration depths, including the simulation tools incl. hydrocodes).

I'd love to see what this would do to a few panes of bulletproof glass, like How Ridiculous does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iJE8Lyvvls

You may not be taking suggestions for the baseball cannon anymore...but if you are...Stretch armstrong...

Samuel merrill

My son wants to see a baseball shot through a car. Into the driver's door and out the passenger's door.

Hello, I just became a new patreon supporter. I had an idea for your baseball cannon. A 1 cubic ft. (Or larger) SOLID BLOCK of lego bricks.

Flat Earther For Life.

I just read an article about a chicken cannon on CNN and it reminded me to wish everyone here a Merry Christmas. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/aviation-chicken-cannons-guns-cmd/index.html

Target idea: Large diameter clear acrylic tube. Example here: https://www.mcmaster.com/8486K835/. Fill with water and seal with thin acrylic sheet on both ends. Seal with acrylic solvent/glue/silicone or equivalent. Fire the baseball through the tube axially. May be able to witness cavitation as the pipe fails simultaneously.

Richard Henderson

This is such a cool project! I'm not a huge fan of graphing on plywood, but thanks for doing it anyway! I'm looking forward to the finished graph! The target idea I came up with while watching this is a big piece of memory foam. I don't know if you're still taking suggestions, but I thought I'd throw it out there!

It'd be interesting to shoot it through a series of metal grids so that maybe the ball can end up sliced at the end once it breaks through the first, oh, 20 grids! Keep killing it with excellent content!

Workbench

Hopefully what I'm sharing isn't the top-secret idea, but I pictured the idea of you using a baseball glove (catcher, I suppose) to use as the target vs the cannon. And, to 'catch' with a baseball glove from an approximate distance when factoring distance, velocity, drag, etc.