Does the angry blue bird multiply its mass?

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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 <i>slide</i> 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. :)