Early on, when a kid first gets his hands on a firearm, he "plinks." He* takes shots at any and everything in sight that looks like it might explode or do some other fun thing when the bullet hits the target. He may go through a handful of ammo, but it's part of the learning experience.
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| Sort of like this one. |
Now that the guys at NASA have gotten older and have their hands on muuuuuch cooler firearms, they've decided to take plinking to a higher level. Curiosity, the Mars rover, is about to take a shot at a rock. There's an Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (I told you they had cooler weaponry). But, just like a kid, they "wanna see what's inside it." All done, of course, in the name of Science. And Learning.
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| The target. |
Remember, guys, deep breath, exhale slow, and squeeze, don't pull.
