Energetic Disassembly of a Burrito: The Movies

Way back when, it was difficult to make movies from video capture. My PowerMac 8500 was barely up to the task. These were the first.

The Burrito.

An orange ....

A rock meets its doom.

These movies play at 1/4 real time.

The Return of the SPAM Recipe

So, apparently, gmail gives you SPAM recipes when you look at your spam folder with Web Links. Here's another winner:

                     *  Exported from  MasterCook  *
 
                       CREAMY SPAM BROCCOLI CASSEROLE
 
 Recipe By     : 
 Serving Size  : 8    Preparation Time :0:00
 Categories    : Casseroles                       Main dish
 
   Amount  Measure       Ingredient -- Preparation Method
 --------  ------------  --------------------------------
                         Vegetable cooking spray
    1       pk           Elbow macaroni (7 oz)
    2       c            Frozen cut broccoli, thawed
                         -and drained
    1       cn           SPAM Luncheon Meat, cubed
                         -(12 oz)
      1/2   c            Chopped red bell pepper
    2       c            Skim milk
    2       tb           Cornstarch
      1/4   t            Pepper
    1       c            Shredded fat-free Cheddar
                         -cheese
      3/4   c            Soft bread crumbs
    2       t            Margarine, melted
 
   Heat oven to 350'F. Spray 2-casserole with vegetable cooking spray.
   Cook macaroni according to package directions; drain. In casserole,
   combine macaroni, broccoli, SPAM, and red pepper. In small saucepan,
   stir together milk, cornstarch, and pepper until cornstarch is
   dissolved. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, until thickened.
   Reduce heat to low. Add cheese; stir until melted. Stir sauce into
   SPAM mixture. combine bread crumbs and margarine; sprinkle on top of
   casserole. Bake 40 minutes or until thoroughly heated.
  
 
 
                    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Also: the trash folder gives you recycling tips.

Energetic Disassembly of a Burrito, a.k.a. "The Exploding Burrito"

This is the first Innocent Inanimate Objects web page - from all the way back in 1995. More to come!

---

Here's what happens when you fire a single .357 SIG hollowpoint bullet end-on into a Taco Bell bean burrito.

Enjoy!

The burrito is propped up on an aluminum can "somewhere" in the Arizona desert. The bullet is about to be fired down the axis of the burrito from a distance of about 8 feet. The "carcass" of another burrito is visible in the background.

The bullet enters the burrito. Immediately the top half of the burrito is blown off, exiting the frame within a single field, meaning it's probably traveling at least 50mph toward the sky. The can, pushed forward and down by the expanding burrito, rebounds violently off the ground and twists toward the camera. Note that the rear of the burrito has moved more than the front, tending to stretch the body of the burrito. Tortillas and beans aren't known for their tensile strength, so as the burrito stretches it is being shredded by its own inertia.

The can is airborne. The expansion of the burrito has torn a hole in the side of the can. As the can takes off it continues to spin, throwing bits of tortilla and bean in all directions.

The burrito is gone. Obliterated. The fate of the top half isn't visible but it is also blasted to smithereens. The largest surviving piece is the large section of wrapper. Nearly everything else is reduced to the size of a bit of chopped onion or smaller. Debris covers a radius of about 10 feet. Note how the scrap of paper in the center "bounces".

Comments

Who would have thought that burritos would make good fireworks. But they do!

(Following comments written c. November 1995)

On this same day we tried out a variety of other handgun calibers and loads on essentially the same setup. .45 hardball (230 grain FMJ roundnose) passed right through, just ripping off the side of the burrito and making a localized mess. 9mm hollowpoint was only slighly more spectacular. 357 SIG FMJ produced a nice spray of material from the burrito but failed to blow it to bits. Unfortunately there was no high-power ammo for the .357 Magnum on this outing.

The weapon fired was a SIG Sauer P229 chambered for SIG 357. It fires a 125 grain bullet at approximately 1400 fps, similar to defense loads for the .357 Magnum (though some hotter .357 loads are available).

The camera used to capture this footage was a Sony Handycam Hi8 TR-101. The electronic shutter was set to 1/4000 sec. Images were captured at full 640x480 resolution using a PowerMac 8500. Several passes were required to get all the frames, since the 8500's built-in hardware would not capture this size at a full 30fps. (Actually this isn't true now, since I started capturing to RAM.) Individual frames were exported from MoviePlayer* as Mac PICTs. These PICTs contained two interlaced fields. DeBabelizer Toolkit was used to separate the fields and then save the resulting images as quarter-frame sized JPEGs at high quality.

All trash of any significant size was picked up and removed from the site afterwards. That's a Coors Cutter can that was brought with us, by the way--nevermind that it's a nonalcoholic beer can, but we wouldn't mix alcohol and firearms, ever, and we hope you won't either!

Various Historical Links Part I

Innocent inanimate objects (like Gallagher, but with high powered weapons)
Phreaky Phriday Phun Links
Thomcat Physics
Food Science: Play with Your Food

* The QuickTime player was called MoviePlayer back in the mid 90s.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Spam Folder

Odd. I was just now emptying my gmail spam folder, and the "sponsored link" at the top of the page took me to a "spam recipe" (or "SPAM recipe" if you follow Hormel's advice on the SPAM trademark):

                   *  Exported from  MasterCook  *

                         VINEYARD SPAM SALAD

Recipe By     :
Serving Size  : 6    Preparation Time :0:00
Categories    : Salads

Amount  Measure       Ingredient -- Preparation Method
--------  ------------  --------------------------------
 1       cn           SPAM Luncheon Meat, cubed
                      -(12 oz)
   2/3   c            Mayonnaise or salad dressing
 1       tb           Lime juice
 1       t            Dry mustard
 2       c            Seedless grapes
 1       c            Peapods, cut in half
   1/2   c            Thinly sliced red onion

In skillet, saute SPAM over high heat 2 minutes,
stirring constantly; set aside. In small bowl, combine
mayonnaise, lime juice, and dry mustard. In large
bowl, combine grapes, SPAM, peapods, and onion. Tos
with mayonnaise mixture. Cover and chill 1 hour.

Innocent Inanimate Objects Is (Coming) Back!

Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I've been able to resurrect my (in)famous Innocent Inanimate Objects page from times bygone. Yes, the Internet was alive in 1996!

More later, but here's a sample. This is a banana shot with a .357 Cor-Bon from a 6" Smith & Wesson 686. Click to see the movie!