You Can’t Shoot a Cannon from a Canoe [Start Your Week]

There’s an old saying, “You can’t shoot a canon from a canoe.”

To shoot a canon and get the result you want, you need a solid foundation for the canon to sit on.  If you fired a canon from a canoe sitting in water, the shot would be a dud because the canoe wouldn’t provide a base solid enough to satisfy Newton’s law.  Newton’s law says, For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. T

he canoe wouldn’t provide that equal and opposite reaction strong enough to help propel the shell out of the canon to the target, keeping the canon from functioning as it should. You would never hit your target. But if you placed the canoe on the ground, the solid earth would provide the opposite reaction needed once the canon is fired to propel the shell to the target.

There would be an equal exchange of ENERGY between the canon and the ground, putting Newton’s law to work...