Last year I wrote about the mysterious attacks that had been made on the home of an 85-year old man who lived in Euclid, a suburb of Cleveland. Over a year or more, the man’s house had been pelted several times a week, and the police were baffled as to who was doing it and how and why.
In my post, I looked at the difficulty of constructing a long-range egg-launcher.
It is not easy to use eggs as high velocity projectiles because the shell is so thin. While potato launchers are easy to build and operate (they are a popular activity in middle and high school physics classes), launching an egg is something else altogether. I am not sure how you can fire an egg so hard as to go for a block or two without it shattering within the launcher itself. In order to keep the force on the egg small enough to avoid shattering the shell, the eggs would need a small acceleration, which requires long acceleration times to get the desired speed, coupled with a very soft driver of the egg. What kind of device would that require?
Given the accuracy of the aim, my guess is that the eggs are not being fired from a couple of blocks away but instead are coming from the back yard of one of the houses that are directly opposite the targeted house, using a large catapult-type launcher, like a long piece of rubber tubing mounted between two supports, with a soft pocket which holds the egg. The eggs are then fired over the roof of the culprit’s house to the target house. If I were police, I would check the backs and roofs of the houses that are opposite since there are likely to be traces of eggs that went awry during the period when the egger was perfecting his or her aim. that commenters also weighed in on the issue.
Commenters also weighed in with various suggestions with one of them bwells having a particularly careful analysis..
But now comes a report that police have finally cracked the case and arrested a 30-year old man named Jason Kozan who had been a former neighbor. The attacks had ceased when Kozan moved away and police had obtained a warrant to search his former home and apparently found evidence that led to the arrest. The report says that Kozan lived at 20971 Wilmore Avenue which is almost directly across the street and slightly to the west from the egged house, which make sense since it was the front of the house that had been egged.
If Kozan is the culprit I hope the police let us know how he did it. I also want to know why he went to all that trouble. After all, he is not a kid. What did he have against his elderly neighbor that he went to so much trouble to make him miserable?
Just realized one of the detectives who “cracked” the case is an old family friend. Forwarding to my parents!
Maybe your friend could tell us how the eggs were fired.
Some kind of particle eggcelerator maybe?
… I’ll get my coat.
A particle eggcelerator would just be eggzagerating the seriousness of this eggregious act.
Besides, with religion rampant, it was probably an egglesiastical argument.
Ouch.
The culprit probably thought his neighbour was gay, or something equally horrible in his mind. It doesn’t take much to set off irrational hate.
But if you put it in a slingshot and spun it like the biblical David you could shorten the acceleration component considerably. Accuracy would be problematic though. I’m guessing it was a drone.
For a fraction of a nanosecond I thought this was about Sonic the Hedgehog’s nemesis, Dr. Eggman. I wouldn’t put it past him to egg someone’s house…
janiceintoronto@4,
Well Kozan may have thought it was a huge yolk, but I think it only white he should shell out some serious compensation.
Drones are awfully loud. You’d hear it for a block or two, at least.
I wonder what evidence they found? Empty cartons matching the shells, presumably? Presumably the FBI/NSA/CIA were able to determine this from the culprit’s iPhone.
You wondered about the difficulty of building an egg launcher for a distance of a few blocks, but then it turns out the suspect lived almost right across the street.
Reginald,
Actually in that quoted passage, I said that “Given the accuracy of the aim, my guess is that the eggs are not being fired from a couple of blocks away but instead are coming from the back yard of one of the houses that are directly opposite the targeted house” which turns out to be correct, except that I don’t know if it was from the backyard or a front window.
“The report says that Kozan lived at 20971 Wilmore Avenue which is almost directly across the street and slightly to the west from the egged house, which make sense since it was the front of the house that had been egged.”
Insert that address into Google map, and shifting to the “earth” view, overhead photo-simulation, using the scale, I estimate the range at roughly 100′ +/- 20′ (30m +/- 6m) I think I could throw an egg 30m without any mechanical assistance. To make it easier I’d get on the roof.
I wouldn’t be so quick to call case cracked. Sure, we may have identified the eggman, but the walrus is still at large.
While egg shells are weak in the transverse, they are extremely strong longitudinally. Famously, you can’t break an eggs by squeezing it with fingers interlaced and the ends in your palms. If the egg were carefully placed, I can see it surviving a rapid acceleration in the launcher.
I can’t wait to hear the eggman’s reasoning.
thebokofdave@13,
The walrus is also wanted, along with his crony the carpenter, in a particularly callous case of multiple bivalvicide.