The Chickens Story
By: Author Unknown

This is allegedly a true story. Whether or not it is true is
not important. It is just one of those great examples of how
instructions in business need to be clear and concise.

Engineers at a major aerospace company were instructed to
test the effects of bird-strikes (notably geese) on the
windshields of airliners and military jets. To simulate the
effect of a goose colliding with an aircraft travelling at
high speed, the test engineers built a powerful gun, with
which they fired dead chickens at the windshields. The
simulations using the gun and the dead chickens worked
extremely effectively, happily proving the suitability of
the windshields, and several articles about the project
appeared in the testing industry press.

It so happened that another test laboratory in a different
part of the world was involved in assessing bird-strikes -
in this case on the windshields and drivers' cabs of new
very high speed trains. The train test engineers had read
about the pioneering test developed by the aerospace team,
and so they approached them to ask for specifications of the
gun and the testing methods. The aerospace engineers duly
gave them details, and the train engineers set about
building their own simulation.

The simulated bird-strike tests on the train windshields and
cabs produced shocking results. The supposed state-of-the-
art shatter-proof high speed train windshields offered
little resistance to the high-speed chickens; in fact every
single windshield that was submitted for testing was smashed
to pieces, along with a number of train cabs and much of the
test booth itself.

The horrified train engineers were concerned that the new
high speed trains required a safety technology that was
beyond their experience, so they contacted the aerospace
team for advice and suggestions, sending them an extensive
report of the tests and failures.

The brief reply came back from the aero-engineers: "You need
to defrost the chickens...."