Heh.
Head on over to the Register for more on this and some amused comments.

Oh yes.
They quite like stories about Satanic cars.too.

Pic [www.breitbart.com]

"Dinner that night in the Chelan County Sheriff's Department mess was somber but delicious."

Brilliant. That's the QOTD.

@Buckster: That was a good looking cow. And an extremely ugly minivan. I feel most sorry for the cow.

Did anyone think to check the hilltop for a lost troupe of French castle guards?

Force = Mass x Acceleration
F = 272 kg x 9.81m/s^2
Force on the Cow from gravity = 2,668.32 Newtons
Thats all I can remember.

This also doesn't take into account wind resistance effect on the cow. I'll let someone else, who presumably has a degree in something related to this, figure out the speed of the cow when it hit the van and its kinetic energy at the time.

the cow gave its life in a good, moral cause - it took out a Chevy Uplander (or possibly a Saturn Relay). i nominate bossy for Jalopnik canonization!

There's actually a simpler formula. Weight of Cow X Number of Feet Fallen X Thickness of Roof Steel Divided by Hoof.

New t-shirt design! On Jalopnik, Moo Fall On YOU!

I nominate @FreeMan for COTD. Thanks for the laugh dude!

That's pretty freaky; a cow falling from a cliff onto a passing vehicle... What are the chances? I had a run-in with a 900lb wayward heifer a while back, in an '82 Civic Wagon at highway speeds. The cow had been hit by another car moments before and was laying across the road when we hit it. It tossed us into the air, with the first bounce off the front-right corner, followed by lots of flips and rolls. Not pretty, but the car did its job and kept us alive and intact.

The car, and the cow, didn't fare so well however.

i would have shit my pants!

@thunder: Thanks for playing the home game!

@jword2001: Nobody said they didn't.
@thunder: That's impressive damage. Maybe the Highway Safety People should start testing for cow impacts.

There's a Far Side cartoon in there somewhere.

@FreeMan: win!

Talk about fast food or perhaps in flight meal?

Didn't this happen in a Top Gear Episode?

@Buckster: I think that cow was already dead... Clarkson just used the Murderer's Camaro to transport the ex-cow.

Forget raw force numbers. The real fun in in comparisons:
What would you rather have destroy your minivan?
A. A 600lb cow falling from 200 feet
B. 150 Navy SEALS armed with 9mm pistols firing simultaneously
C. A bowling ball thrown at you by John Force at 275mph
D. It doesn't matter because they're all the same

@bd_juju: I just remembered the "cow juice" part.

Some aggie campus should get moving on a project breeding dairy cows with Bighorn sheep. Or figure how to equip dairy cows with Land Rover's Descent Control...

This has obviously happened before, I passed a (pictographic) falling cattle sign on CA-58 near Lake Isabella a few years ago.

Photo here: [web.mac.com]

@Zandr: I love it! I used to play in a band called The Sacred Cows. Change the name to Suicide Cows and there's your album cover.

[hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu]
272.155422kg = 200lbs
60.96m = 200ft
1 625 878.26346176 newtons = 365 511.974 pounds force

it reminds me of the safety posters at work reminding us not to drop things when we work on towers. A 5 pound hammer becomes over 100 lbs when falling for more than 3 meters. Crazy!