"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:rVHbf.520936$x96.436058@attbi_s72...
Paraphrased from Sport Aviation this month:

Hitting a Canada Goose exerts the same force as dropping a 1000 pound
weight 10 feet.

Yikes! That would make mince-meat out of ANY GA aircraft.

It would if the claim were true. But a little high-school physics shows it's
not. (And knowing that it's not could bear on important choices you make
while flying--if the claim were true, you'd want to choose almost any
alternative to such a collision.)

Assuming the same compressibility, the forces of the two collisions would be
proportionate to the colliding objects' respective momenta. After dropping
ten feet, an object has a velocity of about 15 knots; hence, a 1000-pound
weight has a momentum of 15,000 knot-pounds. A Canada Goose weighs up to 14
pounds; hence, at (say) 120 knots, its momentum is at most 1,680
knot-pounds--about an order of magnitude less than what's asserted above. If
the 1000-pound weight is harder (less compressible) than the goose, then the
asserted comparison is wrong by an even greater factor.

--Gary