salter 1

Lamonte Salter

Mrs. Casey
Physics- A3
January 17, 2015
Hollywood Physics Final Paper
Movies and TV shows have always included physics defying clips into
real life and or animated films. In this Hollywood physics project we having to
prove and or disprove that scenes from Hollywood movie and TV clips were
defying gravity or not defying gravity. Taking a scene from a real life movie
and one from and animated TV show is how you calculate if the scenes can
actually be possible. The calculations that were used are Work, Linear
Momentum, Kinetic Energy, and Force.
In the real life part of the film, the film chosen was a scene from Fast &
The Furious 6. In this scene, someone has stolen a military tank and Dom
and his crew are trying to take him down and rescue the girl. The car that
Dom is in is on the bridge right next to the one that the tank is on. Dom sees
that his girl is on top of the tank trying to cut a wire and he realizes that she
is going to be shot off. Dom then speeds up really fast in his car, get outs,
hits the railing as the girl is thrown off he is shortly after her. He catches her
and they end up landing on a car breaking the windshield.
In this scene the first thing wrong is when Dom and the letty hit the car
after being shot off their cars. Dom should have been killed from the impact

salter 2

of him hitting the car, letty would have lived though. The calculation used to
prove this is kinetic energy. mass x velocity squared is the exact equation
being calculated. First, we have to find the speeds of the tank and of the car.
The tank is going 72.42 km/hr and the car is going 104.61 in order to catch
up to the tank. Next, we find the weight of letty & Dom. Dom weight around
102 kg and letty weighs around 54.5 kg. Then, we plug those variables into
the equation and find the kinetic energies of the Dom, which is 558,073.84
joules and letty is 141,605.72 joules. Then we subtract the girls kinetic
energy from Doms and get 416,468.12 joules, which is the amount left over
from after they hit the car. So, at the end Dom speeds up fast enough to
catch letty which does save him and the girl until the impact which the letty
will live from but Dom should not live.
The second instance in this scene that is provable is when Dom hits the
car. The equation used in this force, which equals mass times acceleration.
Doms hit should break his back and/or kill him. It takes 3,300 newtons to
break someones back and the force exerted when Dom hit the car was
7,042.5 newtons. It also takes 5,785 newtons for a collision that he took to
kill him. Since, the newtons exerted was enough to kill him, Dom should
have broken his back on impact internally bleed until his lungs filled and
then died. Therefore, there is no way that Dom should have not died or at
least been injured during the hit.

salter 3

The last instance in this scene that is provable is when Dom is so far
behind the tank and he tries to catch up in order to jump out and save letty.
Dom should not have been to catch up to the tank in enough time to save
her. The tank was already going 32 km/hr faster than the car and the tank
was about to flip letty off just right about when Dom was speeding up so
there is no possible way the Dom could have speed up fast enough in order
to catch and save letty.
In the animated part of the film, the video chosen was Regular Show. In
this episode, Ello Govnor, a raccoon is having dreams about a taxicab that
is evil. The raccoon then starts attacking the taxi and kicks in the grill of the
car, punches out the headlights, and also bites of the taxi cab sign. The
raccoons jumps on top of the hood and rips off the very top of the car itself.
Then, he gets a heavy tree and starts to hit the taxi with the tree. He
smashes it until it is almost flat.
In the scene, the first thing that is wrong is where the raccoon is
picking up the large and heavy tree. The calculation used was work, to see if
the raccoon could actually perform enough work to pick up the tree and hit
the car with it four times. The equation for work is force x distance and the
work equals 53,091.2 J. Then we have to multiply that number by four
because the raccoon hits it four times. The actual amount of work comes out
to be 212, 266.8 J. There is no possible way that the raccoon could lift up the
tree and smash the car with it because raccoons usually weigh around 10-30

salter 4

pounds and they can only lift about 50 joules of energy at its max weight and
height. So there is no way possible for a raccoon to lift 212, 266.8 joules of
work because it exceeds the natural limitations.
The second instance in this scene is when the raccoon is trying to pick
the tree back from after which he has already hit the car. The equation used
to prove that it is wrong is linear momentum which is mass x velocity. First,
we have to find the final velocity which is velocity initial plus acceleration
multiplied by time. The mass of the tree is 660kg. Then we plug in all of the
variables and it equals to be 83,853 of momentum. The amount of force that
the tree exerted while hitting the car is too great a force for a raccoon to be
to lift up with or without the momentum being balanced.
The third instance in this scene is when the raccoon is ripping off the
roof of the taxi cab. Since it takes heavy machinery to pull/cut off a roof of a
car and a raccoon and only lift about 50 pounds of energy at max weight and
height , then there is no way that a small raccoon could tear off a roof a car.
Also, the weight of the roof is too heavy for a raccoon to be able to lift up.
In this Hollywood physics project, it is proved how now most movies
and TV shows, real life or animated all defy some part of physics in one way
or another. Using different calculations is the best way to prove that films
defy some part of physics.

salter 5