I went to a mid-sized university in the Blue-Ridge Mountains in Virginia. A few miles from town there is a quarry -- a swimming hole with a 40-foot-tall cement tower. It's a hang out spot for locals and students alike.

One sunny summer afternoon, a friend and I decided to go swimming in the quarry and jumping from the tower into the water. The experience is exhilarating -- you have to work up the nerve to jump and when you do it is scarier than any roller coaster.

After swimming and jumping for a while, I felt the undeniable pressure of a large turd knocking on the door of my puckered winkie. We were a good 25 minutes away from any public restroom, and I knew I would never last that long. All of a sudden, the idea hit me that this would be an excellent time for a physics experiment. I quickly calculated that the poop would hit the water at approximately 20 miles per hour (I later determined it was actually 17 mph). My friend and I then estimated the mass and surface area of the soon-to-be-falling turd based on what I had eaten since my last bowel movement, and came up an estimated .5 kg and 240 square centimeters.

We decided we were in for quite a show. I climbed to the top of the ladder as my friend settled on a spot in the water about 20 feet from ground zero. I got to the edge of the tower and squatted so that my ass hung over.

I took a deep breath and let loose. And as soon as I was finished I looked down to see the results of our little experiment.

It was like something out of a horrible crime scene. The shit had splattered on impact, as if it had come out of my butt-hole as diarrhea -- even though I know it had been a big solid turd. My friend had a look of horror on his face as the chunks began to float closer to him as he frantically swam to shore.

But there was a sense of panic for me as well -- you see, the contaminated area around the tower was growing. There was no time to waste! I ran and jumped off the other end and barely escaped the shit particles. Once safe on shore, my friend proceeded to describe in detail the scene from his vantage.

We both agreed that this experiment taught us much about life and physics alike. We hope to repeat this experiment in front of a high school physics classes one day, and are currently working to secure federal funding for our endeavor.

-- Pbmax