Can You Really Cook A Chicken By Throwing Ice Cubes At It?

While it may sound like a stupid question, it’s really only an extension of a stupid question that has been going around the Internet for years. This question is simply: is it possible to cook a chicken by punching it? 

Of course, it should be in theory. Kinetic energy can be used to add heat.

“Thermal energy is partly a form of kinetic energy; some of it refers to the motion of tiny particles inside a substance. This motion has kinetic energy, but we don’t see it because the particle directions are random and change very rapidly,” physicist David Schmid explains for the University of Illinois.

“The main difference between thermal and kinetic energy is that the first one is random motions of particles that you mostly can’t see by eye, while the second is a unified motion of these same particles, which you can then see.”

In short, add enough kinetic energy to a chicken and you’re in business. What people wanted to know, however, is how hard or frequently you would have to punch the chicken in order to make it edible. Fortunately, a physics major over on Facebook, Parker Ormonde, did the math.

“As your friendly neighborhood physics major, I decided to calculate this with a few assumptions. The formula for converting between kinetic energy and thermal energy 1/2mv2=mcT,” he wrote on Facebook.

“The average human hand weighs about 0.4kg [0.9lbs], the average slap has a velocity of 11 m/s (25mph), an average rotisserie chicken weighs 1kg (2lbs) and has a specific heat capacity of 2,720J/kg*c, and let’s assume the chicken has to reach 205°C (400°F) for us to consider it cooked. The chicken will start off frozen so 0°C (32°F).”

He ultimately concluded that “to cook the chicken in one slap, you would have to slap it with a velocity of 1,665.65 m/s or 3,725.95 mph.”

That’s quite a big ask from a single punch. Fortunately though, you can simply slap the chicken many, many times in quick succession to achieve the same result. Before long, YouTuber Louis Weisz decided to attempt to try this for real. The first attempt ended with a lukewarm chicken that had also been obliterated. After a little tweaking, however, he was able to pasteurize it over 8 hours, using around 135,000 slaps.

The big downside of actually slapping the chicken with your hand is that every action has an equal opposite reaction, or, to make it more chicken-y, if you cook a chicken by slapping it with your hand, you’re going to cook your hand too. With ice, it is in principle still possible to cook the chicken, if you fire it at it fast enough, and with the added benefit that you won’t be serving it up with a hand that has been baked in the process.