How fast must a steak travel through air friction to cook?

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kldickson
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Let's say you've got this steak and you've found a way to launch it in orbit and propel it back to Earth without any effect on the steak other than friction via air:
http://a725.g.akamai.net/7/725/1095/000031/www.omahasteaks.com/gifs/big/ss031.jpg

How fast does it need to go, for how long (give a few different data points if necessary), to cook well done?
 
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Guys, this is sad; nobody's helped me answer my question. I thought you'd have fun working this one out. Or are all the physicists on here vegetarians? :P

Either way, I suppose maybe I can give some figures to help start you off:
mass of meat: 750 g
volume of meat: Appears to be about 270 cm^3 (270 mL)
 
kldickson said:
Guys, this is sad; nobody's helped me answer my question. I thought you'd have fun working this one out. Or are all the physicists on here vegetarians? :P

Naw, I'm just old fashioned and cook my steak on the grill.
 
kldickson said:
without any effect on the steak other than friction via air

Most re-entry heat is the result of compression of the air, rather than friction. How streamlined do you plan to make this steak? :biggrin:
 
No, this is not homework. This is the product of one of the many tangents of my thinking.
 
kldickson said:
No, this is not homework. This is the product of one of the many tangents of my thinking.

How is providing the mass and volume, "an attempt at a solution" ?
 
kldickson said:
No, this is not homework. This is the product of one of the many tangents of my thinking.

I was keeeeding... :wink:
 
seycyrus said:
How is providing the mass and volume, "an attempt at a solution" ?

:smile: :smile:
 
You could take the temperature of the steak, then take it to the top of your chimney and dropit and retake the temperature Then work out the hieght needed for it to cook to your liking, taking into account things like decreasing air resistance, type of marinade etc
 
scupydog said:
You could take the temperature of the steak, then take it to the top of your chimney and dropit and retake the temperature Then work out the hieght needed for it to cook to your liking, taking into account things like decreasing air resistance, type of marinade etc

This will definitely affect the amount of friction due to air resistance.

What cut of meat is this steak? What grade? We need facts.

You could cut up the steak to have multiple orbiting chunks of meat to increase surface area and speed up the cooking process.