frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

How hard do you have to hit a chicken to cook it? (2020)

https://james-simon.github.io/blog/chicken-cooking/
57•jxmorris12•6h ago

Comments

refactor_master•3h ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHFhnnTWMgI
kstrauser•3h ago
This is exactly why I like hanging out with math & physics types. It has big "assuming a spherical, frictionless horse" energy.
flowerthoughts•2h ago
"Mom, where are the hitters in the oven?"

"We call them heaters in that one case."

nielsbot•2h ago
See also: https://www.sportslingo.com/sports-glossary/h/heater
whycome•2h ago
Chicken Gun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_gun

I’m pretty sure NASA used a version of this to test the resiliency of the space shuttle tiles. Not fast enough to cook tho.

thebruce87m•46m ago
Could aim it at the space station. Would be nice to receive a fresh cooked chicken in orbit I imagine.
oofbey•2h ago
I don’t think I agree with the assertion that instantly bringing the chicken up to temp wouldn’t result in it being cooked. Especially since the classic solution got the chicken up to 400F. I don’t care how fast it cools off, if we assume magic uniform heat distribution from the slap, starting at 400 F, all the proteins are gonna be denatured and the diseases killed.
Ekaros•2h ago
Chicken sized 74C object radiates at 2kW? Probably cools rather fast, but still feels like high number...

Energy in general really feels weird, when you look at the numbers. Like potential energy or kinetic on relatively low speeds... And then compared to chemical energy...

Edit: Also how do you get it there? Wouldn't you need to hit it with higher frequency to start with to get to temp?

hakken306•1h ago
Your intuition is right in this case. A 2kW oven is more than enough to heat small chicken up to temperature. The author lazily took the 165F temperature and put it into a blackbody calculator without converting the units. Anything but the metric system...

Assuming the chicken has a surface area A=1m^2 (corresponding to a perfectly spherical chicken of radius=25cm/diameter=50cm, a little bigger than usual) and is a perfect blackbody (just going to handwave this one).

with the incorrect temperature: A blackbody with T=165°C (438 K) and A=1m^2 radiates P=2090 W.

with the correct temperature: A blackbody with T=74°C (347 K) and A=1m^2 radiates P=824 W.

Also neglected is the incoming radiation from the ambient environment. Without this, the "power loss" is closer to measuring the chicken in deep interstellar space. from a room temperature environment: T=20°C (293 K) and A=1m^2 radiates P=419 W onto the chicken.

The net power loss of the cooling chicken on the kitchen counter is therefore something like 824-419 = 405W, rapidly decreasing as the temperature drops towards room temperature. e.g. at 50°C it's around 200W.

petters•1h ago
"a little bigger": it would weigh 65 kg.
fifticon•1h ago
points for'a perfectly spherical chicken'.
userbinator•2h ago
Assuming an infinitely malleable chicken...

This reminds me of the old blacksmithing trick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I68Cik7ywg

slowhadoken•2h ago
You don’t have to hit a chicken hard to cook it you just shoot it at a wall.
foofoo12•24m ago
I think it would negatively affect the visual appearance and texture of said chicken.
5xpB7n8tdbtoP•1h ago
Does anyone know why does the footer of the page have a “ssn”?
PokeyCat•1h ago
It's just the digits of pi, likely not their real SSN.
handfuloflight•1h ago
Sora, show me this.
dvh•1h ago
Are we assuming perfectly spherical chickens in vacuum?
majkinetor•48m ago
Yeah, lets go with that

https://showcase.nano-banana.ai/ai-generated/fal_nano-banana...

xg15•42m ago
OT, but the site of that author looks very interesting in general: https://james-simon.github.io
mrweasel•40m ago
I still need to know how fast I need to ride my bike to not freeze my hands, when biking during the winter without mittens. There has to be some sweet spot where my hands a warm, but not burning.
foofoo12•30m ago
Close to mach Jesus I think. At which time you might have other more pressing problems than cold hands. Remember to maintain the brakes on your bicycle.
neilwilson•22m ago
And the experimental evidence…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LHFhnnTWMgI

foofoo12•21m ago
Someone did build himself a chicken slapper to he could slap himself some chicken dinner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHFhnnTWMgI
bobson381•5m ago
Used to joke in the kitchen that I worked in that if we were pressed for time, instead of baking something for an hour at 300°, we can just bake it for 6 minutes at 3,000°. It's such a fun concept and always makes me giggle

HTML's Best Kept Secret: The Output Tag

https://denodell.com/blog/html-best-kept-secret-output-tag
12•todsacerdoti•18m ago•0 comments

AMD and Sony's PS6 chipset aims to rethink the current graphics pipeline

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/10/amd-and-sony-tease-new-chip-architecture-ahead-of-playstat...
81•zdw•4h ago•47 comments

I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

https://fulghum.io/album-cards
353•jordanf•12h ago•116 comments

(Re)Introducing the Pebble Appstore

https://ericmigi.com/blog/re-introducing-the-pebble-appstore/
152•duck•10h ago•19 comments

How hard do you have to hit a chicken to cook it? (2020)

https://james-simon.github.io/blog/chicken-cooking/
57•jxmorris12•6h ago•25 comments

Tangled, a Git collaboration platform built on atproto

https://blog.tangled.org/intro
178•mjbellantoni•11h ago•45 comments

Synthetic aperture radar autofocus and calibration

https://hforsten.com/synthetic-aperture-radar-autofocus-and-calibration.html
82•nbernard•3d ago•6 comments

Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

https://orb.net/blog/does-speed-make-wifi-suck
179•jamies•13h ago•227 comments

Show HN: Semantic search over the National Gallery of Art

https://nga.demo.mixedbread.com/
108•breadislove•12h ago•30 comments

Show HN: I invented a new generative model and got accepted to ICLR

https://discrete-distribution-networks.github.io/
559•diyer22•23h ago•75 comments

Programming in the Sun: A Year with the Daylight Computer

https://wickstrom.tech/2025-10-10-programming-in-the-sun-a-year-with-the-daylight-computer.html
70•ghuntley•8h ago•13 comments

Show HN: A Digital Twin of my coffee roaster that runs in the browser

https://autoroaster.com/
96•jvkoch•4d ago•31 comments

Lánczos Interpolation Explained (2022)

https://mazzo.li/posts/lanczos.html
117•tobr•6d ago•6 comments

Hardware Stockholm Syndrome

https://programmingsimplicity.substack.com/p/hardware-stockholm-syndrome
64•rajiv_abraham•4d ago•24 comments

Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/oct/10/ryanair-flight-landed-at-manchester-airport-with...
616•mazokum•17h ago•466 comments

Verge Genomics (YC S15) Is Hiring for Multiple Engineering and Product Roles

1•alicexzhang•10h ago

OpenGL: Mesh shaders in the current year

https://www.supergoodcode.com/mesh-shaders-in-the-current-year/
141•pjmlp•20h ago•97 comments

Intelligent Search in Rails with Typesense

https://avohq.io/blog/intelligent-search-in-rails-with-typesense
3•adrianthedev•3d ago•0 comments

After nine years of grinding, Replit found its market. Can it keep it?

https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/02/after-nine-years-of-grinding-replit-finally-found-its-market-ca...
124•toomanyrichies•5d ago•101 comments

Show HN: Lights Out: my 2D Rubik's Cube-like Game

https://raymondtana.github.io/projects/pages/Lights_Out.html
58•raymondtana•1d ago•22 comments

Love C, hate C: Web framework memory problems

https://alew.is/lava.html
122•OneLessThing•1d ago•133 comments

ThalamusDB: Query text, tables, images, and audio

https://github.com/itrummer/thalamusdb
23•itrummer•3d ago•4 comments

HATEOAS for Haunted Houses

https://www.sanfordtech.xyz/posts/hateoas-for-haunted-houses/
25•recursivedoubts•2d ago•5 comments

NanoMi: Source-available transmission electron microscope

https://nanomi.org/
75•pillars•3d ago•9 comments

Ohno Type School: A (2020)

https://ohnotype.co/blog/ohno-type-school-a
187•tobr•4d ago•65 comments

Datastar: Lightweight hypermedia framework for building interactive web apps

https://data-star.dev/
254•freetonik•23h ago•238 comments

Igalia, Servo, and the Sovereign Tech Fund

https://www.igalia.com/2025/10/09/Igalia,-Servo,-and-the-Sovereign-Tech-Fund.html
377•robin_reala•20h ago•58 comments

A Molecular Motor Minimizes Energy Waste

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/167
3•lc0_stein•2d ago•0 comments

What is going on with all this radioactive shrimp?

https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/radioactive-shrimp-explained-a5493175857/
27•riffraff•4h ago•5 comments

How to save the world with ZFS and 12 USB sticks: 4th anniversary video (2011)

https://constantin.glez.de/posts/2011-01-24-how-to-save-the-world-with-zfs-and-12-usb-sticks-4th-...
88•mariuz•11h ago•26 comments