From Star Wars To Cinderella, Physics Students Test Science Behind Hollywood's Most Popular Films And Characters
Recently, a group of physics students from the University of Leicester got to show their fun side in their research on the scientific accuracy of popular fairy tales, mythology and science fiction. While the findings really don’t have much practical use, they do make for an amusing conversation at your next cocktail party.
This year, 10 groups of students published 67 short papers covering a range of interesting and fun topics. “There’s only one real world,” physics professor Mervyn Roy, who oversees the course, told National Geographic. “Students can run out of relatively simple problems because other groups have done them in the past. But once you start to look at fiction, there’s a huge realm of things to explore.”
First on the list of the student’s pop culture take-down was the classic fairytale of Cinderella. According to the student’s peer reviewed study, which was published in the Journal of Physical Special Topics, while Cinderella may have been all right standing in her glass stilettos, the shoe’s heel would shatter the moment she attempted to walk or run. In order to calculate this, the team estimated Cinderella’s weight at about 121 pounds and made her famous glass heels a woman’s U.S. size 6. Based on these measurements, the students calculated that Cinderella would have to have a heel of less than 1.5cm in order to walk without it cracking, and judging from the photographic "evidence," Cindy’s heels were at least a couple of inches high.
Since nothing is sacred, the University’s Leicester physics students also found scientific inaccuracies in Stars Wars. According to their study, due to Einstein’s theory of relativity, twins Leia and Luke Skywalker would not have remained the same age in the film Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. The students calculated that because of relative velocity time dilation as the twins traveled through space at different speeds and distances, Luke would be 1.75 years younger than Leia.
“For Luke to become the same age as Leia, he would have to orbit the gas giant for 9.77 million years,” lead author Thomas Griffith explained in a statement.
Other inaccuracies in the limits of the human body included a study on whether or not a person could survive on Mount Everest. For their study, the students calculated factors such as the pressure and temperature at the highest point on Earth to conclude that it is physically impossible to climb to the summit of Everest without extra oxygen for longer than an extremely brief amount of time. “Therefore we do not suggest that climbers rest at the summit for very long,” the students wrote.
Other topics covered by the students included whether humans could actually colonize Mars, how long Noah’s biblical journey on the ark would have taken, how the Interstellar spaceship survives passing through a supermassive black hole, how to best cool a cup of tea, when the Earth will no longer be inhabitable, and how to control lighting using lasers. To access the full journal complete with all science topics, click here.
Bradley T, McQuade G, Garland L, Walker M. THE WINGS OF PEGASUS. Journal of Physics Special Topics. 2015.
Griffiths T, Vasudevan D, Herlingshaw K, Phillips M. THE SKYWALKER TWINS DRIFT APART. Journal of Physics Special Topics. 2015.
Sadhra M, Tonks L, Samaratuna H, Ahmed HS. Can you really survive Everest? Journal of Physics Special Topics. 2015.