by Tony Wayne
First, thanks to Tom O'Neil for the idea. Go to the video store andbuy a Road Runner and Wyle E. Coyote video. After covering Newton'slaws and conversation of energy laws show the cartoons. Ask thestudents what laws are violated during each cartoon. After adiscusion, give the students the assignment to write a set of cartoonphysics laws.
Below are a set of cartoon laws that came across the PHYS-L listsystem on the internet. Unfortunately the author's name was lostthough all the forwarding. Enjoy.
Cartoon Law I
Any body suspended in space will remain in space until madeaware of its situation.
EXAMPLE : Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting furtherpastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until hechances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32feet per second per second takes over.
Cartoon Law II
Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matterintervenes suddenly.
EXAMPLE : Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit onfoot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that onlya telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motionabsolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motionthe stooge's surcease.
Cartoon Law III
Any body passing through solid matter will leave aperforation conforming to its perimeter.
EXAMPLE : Also called the silhouette of passage, thisphenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-pressureexplosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape thatthey exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving acookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony oftencatalyzes this reaction.
Cartoon Law IV
The time required for an object to fall twenty stories isgreater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it offthe ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture itunbroken.
NOTE : Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attemptto capture it inevitably unsuccessful.
Cartoon Law V
All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
NOTE :Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for ashock to propel them directly away from the earth's surface. A spookynoise or an adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward,usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of aflagpole. The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of aspeeding auto need never touch the ground, especially when inflight.
Cartoon Law VI
As speed increases, objects can be in several places atonce.
NOTE : This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights,in which a character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloudof altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect iscommon as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A`wacky' character has the option of self- replication only at manichigh speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocityrequired.
Cartoon Law VII
Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted toresemble tunnel entrances; others cannot.
NOTE : This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffledgenerations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entranceon a wall's surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue himinto this theoretical space. The painter is flattened against thewall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimatelya problem of art, not of science.
Cartoon Law VIII
Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
EXAMPLE : Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than thetraditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can bedecimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, ordisassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments ofblinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, orsolidify.
Corollary : A cat will assume the shape of itscontainer.
Cartoon Law IX
Everything falls faster than an anvil.
Cartoon Law X
For every vengeance there is an equal and oppositerevengeance.
NOTE :This is the one law of animated cartoon motion thatalso applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we needthe relief of watching it happen to a duck instead.
Cartoon Law Amendment A
A sharp object will always propel a character upward.
NOTE : When poked (usually in the buttocks) with a sharpobject (usually a pin), a character will defy gravity by shootingstraight up, with great velocity.
Cartoon Law Amendment B
The laws of object permanence are nullified for "cool"characters.
EXAMPLE : Characters who are intended to be "cool" can makepreviously nonexistent objects appear from behind their backs atwill. For instance, the Road Runner can materialize signs to expresshimself without speaking.
Cartoon Law Amendment C
Explosive weapons cannot cause fatal injuries.
They merely turn characters temporarily black and smoky.
Cartoon Law Amendment D
Gravity is transmitted by slow-moving waves of largewavelengths.
NOTE : Their operation can be witnessed by observing thebehavior of a canine suspended over a large vertical drop. Its feetwill begin to fall first, causing its legs to stretch. As the wavereaches its torso, that part will begin to fall, causing the neck tostretch. As the head begins to fall, tension is released and thecanine will resume its regular proportions until such time as itstrikes the ground.
Cartoon Law Amendment E
Dynamite is spontaneously generated in "C-spaces" (spaces inwhich cartoon laws hold).
NOTE : The process is analogous to steady-state theories ofthe universe which postulated that the tensions involved inmaintaining a space would cause the creation of hydrogen fromnothing. Dynamite quanta are quite large (stick sized) and unstable(lit). Such quanta are attracted to psychic forces generated byfeelings of distress in "cool" characters (see Amendment B, which maybe a special case of this law), who are able to use said quanta totheir advantage. One may imagine C-spaces where all matter and energyresult from primal masses of dynamite exploding. A big bangindeed.
Digital Timers on a ShoestringBudget
by Tony Wayne
Have you seen those timers in catalogs that digitally can time eventsfor up to 1/1000 of a second. If you are willing to only measure downto the 100th's you can save $100's of dollars per station.
Buy a cheap stopwatch. Oriental Trading company sells onefor $3.00.
Unscrew the back and take out the start stop button.
Use a voltmeter to determine which button connection is positive andnegative.
Solder an 8 inch red wire to the positive connection and an 8 inchblack wire to the negative connection.
Now it is up to you to make the on-off switches.
A future issue of the newsletter will include how to make a simpleinfrared photogate system.
Below is an example of a no contact switch that has been successfullyused.
Below is an example of how I used the watch to create a nocontact on-off timing system. This system will be demonstrated at theVIP meeting on Oct 8, 1994.
Sources : Neodymium Magnets from; All ElectronicsCorp., P.O. Box 567, Van Nuys, CA 91408-1567
Ph 1-800-826-2653. (They are about the size of a penny and $1.25each)
Cheap stop watches; Oriental Trading Company, PO box 2308, Omaha, NE,68103-2308,
Ph 1-800-228-2269