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Comment by akavlie | Hacker News Reader

The physics at play here (at least as reported in the article) are hard to fathom.

It went through the front door, bounced around the home, UP to the second floor, THROUGH the back wall...

And enough energy still remained to send it across a road 50 yards, UP again to a roof, and finally smashing through a van window.

I wish they could have captured this with high-speed cameras from multiple angles, like they do with experiments that go as planned.

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I'm guessing that the reporter completely made up the "bounced around" bit to make it sound more sensational. Seems more likely to have entered the front door at an upward angle, sailed through the house and out the back and across the street.

That makes sense. Still incredible that it had so much energy that it was still going after making it through a door and a wall.

It's also surprising that it could bounce so high (at least once) after hitting a floor.

That makes sense. Still incredible that it had so much energy that it was still going after making it through a door and a wall.

Keep in mind these are American houses, flimsy paper cardboard and this bits of wood things.

Their Americanness has little to do with their build quality. The climate in California likely does. Been to places in the USA where it actually gets cold? The houses are way more sturdy there because they need to be.

North Dakota, South Dakota, eastern Montana and northern Minnesota are the coldest places in the continental US and the houses mostly tend to be cheap and flimsy. Houses in California seemed to be much more robust, actually. Build quality probably has a lot more to do with local building codes.

I think it depends more on the year the house was built. Newer houses seem to be built really cheaply, while ones from 50+ years ago here are fairly solid.

Proximity to a fault line is also a major factor (influencing local building codes, as well as common sense and economics).

Flimsy houses built 50+ years ago likely don't exist anymore.

My landlord will likely be fairly distressed with this news. ;)

I think it has to be more than 50 years old. More like 70. Most of the houses around here look like they were built in the 60s, 70s and 80s and are not great.

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