What is the average speed of a swallow quote

Know Your Meme is an advertising supported site and we noticed that you're using an ad-blocking solution. Read Edit History. Origin In the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail , the discussion of the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow takes place twice in the film. Spread The quote has long been an inside joke for fans of Monty Python and also those interested in computing. Top entries this week. Search Interest Not available at this time.

Latest Editorial And News. Meme 'Tis A Silly Place. Meme Help! I'm Being Repressed. Recent Videos 4. Add a Video. Add an image. Tags monty python holy grail internet joke siri nerd humor african or european wolfram alpha technical trivial carrying a coconut eric idle john cleese. View More Editors. According to research from the Avian Demography Unit of the University of Capetown, the European swallow has an average length of If we use the information mentioned in the videos above, we would estimate that a European swallow flaps its wings 43 times every second in order to maintain the necessary airspeed velocity.

Examining research by zoologist C. Pennycuick, in a journal article entitled Predicting Wingbeat Frequency and Wavelength of Birds , we can find relevant data to the European swallow.

This gram swallow was found to flap its wings about 12 times every second, with an amplitude of 20 cm each time. Strike one for Monty Python. Though, I guess we can give them a little bit of credit here, considering that the swallow being observed in this research wasn't exactly what King Arthur was talking about.

When we take the number of beats per second 12 and multiply it by the distance per beat. Translating this into miles per hour, we see that the airspeed velocity of a European swallow is This number lines up with the measured velocities of real birds as well, which means we're on the right track for the mathematics.

So, answering the main question here, the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow is something like But, what if the swallow was laden by, say, carrying a coconut to Europe?

Would it even then be possible for a swallow weighing 20 grams to pick up a coconut and transport it to Europe? Assuming a large coconut, as seen in the video, this is a fairly absurd proposition. There's no way that a bird as small as a swallow could carry a coconut that was more than double its weight. What is the average air speed velocity of a laden swallow?

To this I say: Ha-ha. Very funny. They need to cross a bridge to continue their quest but in order to do so, they have to answer the above question. This was certainly a tricky question to say the least. Lots of physics involved that I have pushed to those dusty corners in my mind.

Not to mention you need to know a little bit about swallows. Some found in Africa, others in Europe. What is air speed velocity? In order to calculate the airspeed you have to take the difference between ground speed and the wind speed. Ground speed is the speed in which an object moves relative to some reference point on the ground.

Wind speed is the speed in which the air moves relative to some reference point on the ground. If there was a case in which a day had absolutely no wind, the ground speed is equal to the wind speed. Of course this is highly unlikely to ever happen.