Is it really possible to tip a cow?
According to Hollywood, “cow tipping” is a popular pastime among bored (and inebriated) Midwestern teens. Knowing Tinseltown’s long-standing commitment to truth and accuracy, we were prepared to accept this as fact. But then we started investigating and discovered the cruel and unusual hobby is more urban legend than reality. In the movies, a cow is usually tipped by two drunkards in letterman’s jackets. A couple of researchers from the University of British Columbia did some calculations and figured that tipping a cow would actually take a lot more force than a couple of sloshed jocks could generate. Specifically, it would require 4.43 people to push the cow’s center of mass past the point of no return. In other words –
