Lord of the Rings Physics Homework

You do realize this is fiction...?

An attempt to make Physics more fun. The Wired posts on the math behind the Star Wars Death star and Avengers movie arrow shot was rather interesting.

"An attempt to make Physics more fun."

Make physics more fun? But it's supposed to be a dry and humourless pursuit, full of those silly rule sticks with that slidey thing and pipe smoking men in rumpled short-sleeve shirts and ties with pocket protectors jammed full of things...

Oh, wait... what room is this? I'm looking for Worn Stereotypes, room CR3.

Physics already is more fun!

Personally I found 'Gone in 60 seconds' to be far more of a reality bender than Lord of the Rings.

At least in Gandalf's world there really could be unexplainable magic allowing for such actions and items to exist.

The length of Balrog's whip is just a another fun problem/Amessage. I had a somewhat similar problem regarding Lois Lane falling from a building and Superman's Initial velocity to rescue her before she hit the pavement. This was in 1960. Physics profs never change, just their characters.

The Balrog is made of fire. So even if having wings, being a demon, and being magical don't affect his rate of fall, being made of flame might affect his buoyancy. Also, maybe he was fleeing instead of falling.

Fundamentally, he will fall as fast as the director wants him to fall. The whip is as long as the director wants it to be. The only way to determine those numbers is to measure it. Someone may be able to use the video clip to see how fast he shrinks, and let go of assumptions of the acceleration of gravity and air resistance.

Who could ever vote #2 OT? That was one of the best answers of all time!

Perhaps they didn't understand my meaning in post #2, in that case I say to them.....

"YOU SHALL NOT PARSE !!!!!"

Maybe they just have to see the movie.

For kids today with their shorter attention spans watching the extended directors-cut version of the Lord of the Rings movies IS classified as undertaking an epic journey.

Your #2 was a delight! Thanks for the moment..

The whole damn point is..

Physics is fun when applied to a REAL situation where it will add some sort of value to the job, project, situation.

Who gives a f*uck how long Balrog's tadger is?

Del

(Just in case it isn't apparent I'm in grumpy mode)

Balcat cares.

Ooooooh scarey cat
Del

But he's magnificent in his scariness!

Here's a real situation:

In 1975 my friends and I were out in the Mojave Desert exploring when we came across what looked like a large pipe sticking about 15 cm out of the ground. As it was in the middle of nowhere we thought it might have been an abandoned well or something. It went straight down as far as we could tell.

I shined a torch down the pipe and could see a tiny dot of reflected light at the bottom, probably water. We wanted some idea how deep it was and so we did what anybody would do: we dropped rocks down the pipe to see how long it took them to hit bottom. It took an awfully long time! In fact, we'd dropped several rocks before hearing the first, thinking we'd missed it. Then we heard it followed by the sounds of the others hitting bottom in the same pattern as we'd dropped them. That hole was deep!

As my watch had a chronometer function we dropped a bunch of rocks, timed each one and then took an average: if I recall correctly it was about 14.1 seconds. We chose rocks all having about the same size and shape to keep things as consistent as possible. The rocks were roughly spherical and about 5 cm in diameter.

How deep was the well?

1/2 x 32 x 14.1^2 feet

Del

That's about 3000'

3198 feet by calculation, but the delay time for the sound to come back creates an error. Subtract about 2.5 for seconds from the original time 14.1s and redo the calc for a closer estimate of 2100 feet

less. much less. (why?)

Terminal velocity.

Ka-CHING!

Down boy.........Nothing here to bust a bowstring over!

The only thing that matters in this incident is that Gandolf was an experience point hog.

Instead of everyone participating in the destruction of the Balrog and sharing in the xp, Gandolf had everyone leave while he stayed behind to confront the Balrog. So Gandolf defeats the the Balrog, gets all the experience points and levels up from Grey Wizard to White Wizard.