There's an interesting article in the Annals of Irreproducible Research where (using a suspect extrapolation!) they calculated how many times you'd have to drop a frozen turkey from an 10-story building to get it fully cooked. IIRC the title was "Cooking with Potential Energy". The text (though not the graphs) seems to be online at http://www.bmsc.udel.edu/niiler/HESC276/PotentialEnergy.txt Tim.