Something very interesting happened to me a couple months ago. In January I went to the SHOT show with the rest of the OYOA and Warm Springs crew. Unlike them, I didn't have any important meetings to attend to, so my time was spent wandering the show floor, looking at new products, and attending awards banquets.
Anyhow, as I was wandering around one day, I stopped by the Remington booth. They had this giant 8' tall plastic tube filled with empty shells, along with a promotion where you could give them all of your information and a guess at how many shells are in the tube, and the person with the closest guess wins a gun.
Because I didn't have anything better to do, I set to work on trying to figure out the number as best I could. I like having something to calculate, so I used the string on my name tag as a ruler, and found that the tube was 8' tall and 2' in diameter. Then I took a look at the mix of shells in the tube and found a plethora of different gauges and lengths. I guessed at the average size of the shells and the amount of "free space" was between shells. Putting all of these numbers into the equation for volume of the tube times what I referred to as the "shell density" and dividing by what I guessed as the average volume of the empties, I came up with a number. After thinking for a minute and argu...*ahem*...I mean, talking with another show attendee who was convinced my guess was way too high based on her many years of reloading experience, I put my slip of paper in the box and proceeded to completely forget about the whole ordeal.
At least I forgot about it until I got an e-mail from Remington a few weeks later. It turns out that there were a few thousand shells in there, and I missed the correct number by just 3.
I'm waiting to finish up my last test and homework assignment before I fly home for spring break, and I have been informed that there is a brand new 12 gauge Remington Versa Max waiting for me in Bozeman.
My thanks goes out to the guys at Remington! I'll update this later to let you all know what I think of it once I finally get to try it out. If nothing else, it is at least a good story, right?
Anyhow, as I was wandering around one day, I stopped by the Remington booth. They had this giant 8' tall plastic tube filled with empty shells, along with a promotion where you could give them all of your information and a guess at how many shells are in the tube, and the person with the closest guess wins a gun.
Because I didn't have anything better to do, I set to work on trying to figure out the number as best I could. I like having something to calculate, so I used the string on my name tag as a ruler, and found that the tube was 8' tall and 2' in diameter. Then I took a look at the mix of shells in the tube and found a plethora of different gauges and lengths. I guessed at the average size of the shells and the amount of "free space" was between shells. Putting all of these numbers into the equation for volume of the tube times what I referred to as the "shell density" and dividing by what I guessed as the average volume of the empties, I came up with a number. After thinking for a minute and argu...*ahem*...I mean, talking with another show attendee who was convinced my guess was way too high based on her many years of reloading experience, I put my slip of paper in the box and proceeded to completely forget about the whole ordeal.
At least I forgot about it until I got an e-mail from Remington a few weeks later. It turns out that there were a few thousand shells in there, and I missed the correct number by just 3.
I'm waiting to finish up my last test and homework assignment before I fly home for spring break, and I have been informed that there is a brand new 12 gauge Remington Versa Max waiting for me in Bozeman.
My thanks goes out to the guys at Remington! I'll update this later to let you all know what I think of it once I finally get to try it out. If nothing else, it is at least a good story, right?
