Does the angry blue bird multiply its mass? (opens in new tab)

This is the kind of brilliant and pointless analysis that I love. Me, I would have just emailed the app author and asked them.

You might laugh, but I genuinely thought this was going to be something about Twitter and the momentum caused by an avalanche of negative tweets - ie Gap logo, etc.

Turns out I couldn't be more wrong.

Incredibly cool and in-depth post. But it's funny, I just assumed the conclusion intuitively since the first time I used a blue bird.

Please note that "its" is the correct word to use in the title and the Wired article had it correct.

Edit: Thanks.

I noticed something was not being conserved with the blue bird when I first tried out Angry Birds. My strategy was usually to explode the bird just before collision to take advantage of the extra force.

My assumption was that the mechanism for splitting 1 bird into 3 birds was an internal explosion. This would introduce a large amount of energy into the system and account for increased velocity in the resulting birds, and thus the increased momentum.

Of course there is a way to test my theory (and I realize it probably has little basis in how the game was actually programmed, but it satisfied my mechanical engineer side to reconcile what I was seeing with reality). You could launch the blue bird such that it falls just to the right of a standing piece of wood and "explode" it just as it's right next to the wood. If it is, in fact, an explosion that propels all 3 new birds to the right, then there would be an equal force directed to the left, which should knock the piece of wood over without touching it.

Tomorrow: Does the angry yellow bird violate the conservation of momentum?

I love how the conclusion to all of this is that you should expand blue birds before impact - a conclusion I reached in twenty seconds by just trying it both ways.

Neat-o. Hopefully, he'll explain next why the sticks and stones don't seem to have heard of Isaac Newton at times! Some of the planks won't even slide and fall when they're in awkwardly precarious positions. But, then again, that's why I played for an hour at work the other day. :)