Measuring The Ridiculous Physics Of Disney's Hercules

OK, so I'm a physicist, and I'm a sucker for mundane analysis such as this. It turns out that Harvard Sports Analysis Collective have decided to focus on the physics problems in Disney's "Hercules". Now while this is an animated movie and there are a lot of liberties taken in such a medium (see "Looney Tunes"), there are aspects that can make a movie rather ridiculous if it occurs way too blatantly and too often. I'm not sure if it applies here, but you can judge for yourself.

For example, the first one they tackled in the article is the "flying donkey scene".

Poor Penelope was in the air for 7.7 seconds of screen time. With this measurement alone, we can deduce that she reached a maximum height of 73 meters, meaning she went on a ride higher than the eighth-tallest roller coaster in the world without so much as a seatbelt. Furthermore, we estimate that the g-force required to catch Penelope—a task Hercules managed with little to no stress—exceeds 19 g. Keep in mind that anything over 25 g is likely to result in serious injury or death to a human (and probably a donkey). At Penelope's speed, the force of the catch is equivalent to her crashing into a telephone pole at 84 mph.

To propel an average-sized donkey that high, the mass of the haystacks must have totaled 12,864 kg (28,360 lbs), which didn't seem to faze Hercules, who managed its weight with one arm. What's less clear is how Hercules's father expected Penelope to lug over 14 tons of hay into town. Donkey rights have come a long way.

So in this case, while we give a lot of liberties to Hercules and his powers/abilities, the fact that for something like this to have happened implied a haystack weighing THAT much, and being pulled by an "ordinary" donkey, makes it a problem.

You can entertain yourself, if you wish, with the others. :)

Note that this is unlike movies such as "Up", where there were considerable discussion on the possibilities of certain amazing things to happen, such as how to model all those balloons that were used to lift up the house.

Zz.