WE'RE DONE!!!

My group and I have been working on this project diligently for the past two weeks, and we are finally done! So here you go! The physics of Wile. E. Coyote!!!

Reflection of the Week - 10/10/11 - 10/14/11

I'm stuck.

This week has, unfortunately, been a bit unproductive. I've actually been gone two days this week so that really didn't help at all. However, I have been able to figure a few things out:

1. Watching Looney Toons is still ridiculously hilarious, even when all you're watching is a 20 second clip over and over again. 
2. I've actually figured out why the large rock teeters slower than expected when the coyote and smaller rock hit it. There is an extra rock underneath the larger rock that acts as a separate type of lever, which slows down the joined rocks as they come down. I've also been able to calculate the length of each rock, based on the length of Coyote. The largest rock is about 13ft, the rock the coyote is on is about 7ft, and the rock that catapults the coyote is about 6ft.
3. If my calculations are correct, and I'm only half sure about them, Coyote falls 2480.6m, which adds up to a force of 55,566 Newtons, after he hits the overhanging rock. That's a whole bunch of newtons. 
4. This is where I got stuck. I need to calculate the mass of the catapulting rock, but it's in cartoon land. I can assume that the rock is sandstone because it is in the Grand Canyon/desert, and I know that it is about 7ft long. 

So that's what I did this week. I've calculated about half of the Physics so far seen in this video, and I'm stuck on the other half. That's what I'll be doing next week though. I'll probably have a meeting with my group and/or teacher to get some ideas. Oh! Since you have no idea what this magical "video" is that I keep talking about, here's a link if you want to check it out and keep up with my calculations/Physic babble.

Reflection of the Week - 10/3/11 - 10/7/11

Ok so continuing with Wile E.:

We've divided the project into three separate projects. I will be working on calculating all the physic stuff for the video when Wile E. gets catapults with rocks.

1. So far I've been using the equation: d=.5(g)(t2): Distance is equal to one-half x the rate of gravity x time squared. 
2. With this I've been able to calculate how far the coyote fell.
3. After finding this information I found a site to calculate the average force of a falling object: 

Overall, this week has been about trying to figure out how things actually work in a cartoon world. I've been able to find the first few physics elements of this video, but there's still more work to be done. Yep, it's been a work week, and next week will be too.  

Reflection of the Week - 9/26/11 - 9/30/11

Cartoons, cartoons, cartoons. Any person with a decent childhood can remember Wile W. Coyote and The Roadrunner. That's why, for our Physics project, my group is trying to analyze the physics of Wile E. Coyote. Falling of enormous cliffs, walking on air, with all the crazy things the Coyote manages to do, how does Physics really come into play? That's what we've been trying to do all week.

First we started thinking of things we wanted to check out. We came out with three main things:

1.      How far does the Coyote usually fall off a cliff, and how he is catapulted when he doesn't fall?

          2.   How fast does the Coyote go so that he is able to walk on                   air?

3.      What happens so that an Acme Bear Trap is set off with a drop of oil and not an entire bowl of Acme Bird Seed?

Then we set out to find some videos, thank you YouTube! All three videos were pretty easy to find (good old Wiley falls off cliffs pretty often), especially the third one since it's a very selective scene. Next we found out the average weights and measurements of a coyote and roadrunner. We had to assume that both Wile E. and The Roadrunner are about average, as there are no hard facts on them, and they're obviously not correctly scaled anyway. After all this we started a GoogleDoc Presentation and started piling the information and videos together. That brings us up to date. Right now we are "prototyping" calculations. We're not quite sure how to calculate how fast Coyote has to run to walk on air, so we're working it out. So that's what we'll be doing all next week, trying to find the best way to calculate all this physics stuff!