A highway patrol officer is sitting in his car, parked behind the weigh-station. A semi-truck slows down, pulls over, and stops just before the scales. The trucker gets out, and starts banging on the side of the trailer...

Posted by crowmagnuman@reddit | Jokes | View on Reddit | 56 comments

He goes up and down both sides of the trailer, just pounding on it all over and making a big racket. As he's making his way back to the cab, the officers suspicion is just too high to ignore it, so he gets out to confront the guy and get to the bottom of the weird behavior.

"Sir is there anything in your trailer I should know about?"

"No, officer! Everything's fine here. All good. Just weighing the load at this checkpoint before the bridge."

"Would you like to explain why you felt the need to get out and bang on the sides of your trailer?"

"Well uh, you see officer, I'm... I'm hauling 44 tons of exotic birds."

"Exotic birds, huh? Are these legal to transport?"

"Oh yeah, they're legal-eagle, man. Papers and everything."

"Well that doesn't explain why you were banging on the trailer. That looks suspicious to me. Would you like to explain before we open it up and have a look?"

After a long pause the trucker replies, "You see officer, that bridge is only rated for 32 tons of load. If I don't have em all up in the air and flying around when I weigh out, well..."

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etherified@reddit

Not a physicist but thanks for confirming my instinct. Does the situation change any whether the truck is hermetically sealed (though unlikely for living birds), or has air holes communicating with the outside?

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cwm9@reddit

If the truck is open so air can freely exchange, the higher the birds are the more the air currents spread out, so yes it makes a difference. A flock of birds flying far overhead do not weigh you down, but one hovering directly over your head produces wind currents that push down upon you.

This is sort of like if a helicopter or jumbo jet flys overhead you don't feel the weight of it, but if you are directly behind below the helicopters rotors or behind an engine of the jet you certainly will feel the pressure of the air pushing you down/back.

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berkleysquare@reddit

Out of curiosity,in order to survive which position should you put your body if the cable of the elevator you were in snaps on the 50th floor?

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Justin_Passing_7465@reddit

Downward-facing-corpse.

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ActualSpamBot@reddit

Missionary.

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AussiePete@reddit

Boring! If I'm going out it'll be in Reverse Cowgirl at the very least!

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HowlingWolven@reddit

Any position. Unless the brake also fails, in which case, bend over, grab your knees, and kiss your ass goodbye.

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cwm9@reddit

I recommend the outside-the-elevator position.

As a physicist I feel obligated to ruin the joke by pointing out that the birds are supported by the air which is supported by the truck in such a way that the weight of the truck does not change when the birds take flight.

FanraGump@reddit

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist.

But since this is basic physics (which he would obviously know), and he's famous, I'll let it slide.

TinyNiceWolf@reddit

Tyson would obviously need to understand birds if he's to have any hope of understanding why the stars haven't fallen (yet).

Stars are always falling. Just not enough to matter too much to those on Earth (yet).

I appreciate that, officer!

johnn48@reddit

Neil is a buzz kill, he’s ruined so many conversations and jokes, that we’ve just stopped inviting over.

... johnn48 appears behind Tyson just as he is about to speak, taps him on the shoulder and says, "but akshually, the bridge was built with a safety factor of 5, so it turns out he can pass."

A member of the Board of Direction of the American Society of Civil Engineers appears and notes that they assigned an overall grade of C to the nation’s bridges.

So he may not pass.

tourbox12@reddit

Why did I read that as Sean Connery? 007

Valuable-Paramedic93@reddit

Call Dave instead, Dave is fun and has lots of nice stories to tell ....

HS_HowCan_That_BeQM@reddit

Dave's not here.

NewGuy-1964@reddit

And he knows absolutely everyone!

BoundlessFail@reddit

Who is that standing next to Dave and Neil?

Some guy with a big hat 😁

ThePhyseter@reddit

Dave's not here

villageboyz@reddit

Yep.

Always bringing facts and logic to the conversations.

Stringy63@reddit

Are you sure he didn't also say, "this joke shall not pass"?

He was for certain thinking it.

lurkandpounce@reddit

relevant AlphaPheonix video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnvtstq3ztI

freelance-lumberjack@reddit

The displacement of the inertia of air has no effect on the truck. A jet flew over me yesterday and I wasn't instantly crushed by the weight of it.

Let me strap you to a concrete block and put you immediately behind the exhaust if the jet engine and see if you are still sure about that...

cpeosphoros@reddit

Just because its downward pressure was distributed along dozens of square kilometers.

Dzjeek@reddit

Solid

Supadoplex@reddit

I thought Neil was going to arrest him for breaking the laws of physics.

Pheeshfud@reddit

Mythbusters also confirmed this.

2Ben3510@reddit

I'm shocked that he doesn't utter to the birds "Fly, your fools!".

Just edit your post to add it as an addendum to the story!

I'm not OP! And I realize that the real opportunity was "Fly, you fowls!".

Love it.

pleasetrimyourpubes@reddit

I love Reddit. The joke is always in the comments.

goshdammitfromimgur@reddit

Mythbusters did an episode on this

Missing4Bolts@reddit

Here's a fascinating videa that's not about the weight, but acceleration: https://youtu.be/niqeCL80W5g?si=eMhWXwn_U4ebXBSM

I mean... Weight is a force, and force is mass times acceleration, so weight is mass times acceleration... So yeah. In this case it's the acceleration of gravity...

I should have said lateral acceleration.

A-CommonMan@reddit

very cool video.

BobbyK0312@reddit

reminds me of my favorite Calvin and Hobbs strip

Calvin asks his dad how they know the weight limit for trucks crossing a bridge. His father replies: "they build the bridge and then keep driving heavier and heavier trucks across it until it collapses, then they know the maximum weight it holds and they rebuild the bridge to the same spec"

thenasch@reddit

The world's heaviest flying bird is the kori bustard. 44 tons of them would be over 2000 birds each with a wingspan over seven feet. Or if it were something small, say starling size, they might weigh 8 ounces, in which case there would be 176,000 of them flying around in there. What I'm saying is that's a really dang big trailer.

NeatAcrobatic9546@reddit

Is that the European bustard or the African?

TranslatorUnique9331@reddit

Delete your comment or I shall taunt you a second time.

PunnyGuy77@reddit

It smelt of elderberries

resident__researcher@reddit

It doesn't matter where he grips it! It's a question of weight ratios!

JKayBee@reddit

You are ignoring the weight of the trailer itself. It could be made of extra dense material to make it strong.

If it's too light, all the birds might flap together and fly away with the container...

I took him at his word when he said " I'm hauling 44 tons of exotic birds."