While on vacation last week I stayed at Tracy's aunt's house. I didn't bring shaving cream, so I borrowed her grandson Adam's. Adam is stationed in Fallujah and hadn't used the shaving cream for a while. As I tried to squirt some in my hand, it (the shaving cream) shot all the way across the bathroom and nailed the wall.
Naturally, I had to calculate the muzzle velocity of the shaving cream.
Before cleaning up, I took some rough measurements: 5 feet of horizontal travel; 2 inches of vertical drop.
Later, while driving, I did some rough calculations:
distance = half of the acceleration of gravity times the time squared
5 ft = 1/2 X 32 ft/sec/sec X t squared
t = the square root of 5/16ths = approximately half a second
The muzzle velocity: 5 ft/0.5 seconds, or 10 feet/second. That's 10 ft/second X 3600 seconds/hour / 5280 feet/mile, or approximately 7 miles per hour.
Doesn't sound very dangerous after all. Bummer.
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