Dear Friends,

Klaus and Keith got me to thinking about the
Cartoon Laws of Physics?

Here's an early version, together with cartoon legend
Chuck Jones's description (his cartoon ontology)
of the Road Runner series.

http://www.mit.edu/people/jcb/humor/cartoon-physics

In my book, Daffy Duck ranks right up there with
Kierkegaard, Neitszche, and C. S. Peirce.

Th-th-th-, th-th-th-, th-th-that's all, folks.

Ken



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[0868] daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett) Humor 05/08/95
11:37 (209 lines)
Subject: HUMOR (classic): Cartoon Physics (revised)
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 08 May 1995 11:32:11 EDT
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett&#64;MIT.EDU>

Date: Sat, 06 May 1995 18:13:29 +0000 (GMT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN&#64;aries.colorado.edu>

Forwarded-by: <markoff&#64;nyt.com>


Cartoon Laws of Physics

--

Cartoon Law I

Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of
its situation.

Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He
loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look
down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per
second takes over.

--

Cartoon Law II

Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter
intervenes suddenly.

Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon
characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone
pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely.
Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the
stooge's surcease.

--

Cartoon Law III

Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
conforming to its perimeter.

Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the
specialty of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless
cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through
the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat
of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.

--

Cartoon Law IV

The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater
than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the
ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.

Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it
inevitably unsuccessful.

--

Cartoon Law V

All principles of gravity are negated by fear.

Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel
them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an
adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to the
cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. The
feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding auto
need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.

--

Cartoon Law VI

As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.

This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a
character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of
altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common
as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A `wacky'
character has the option of self-replication only at manic high
speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.

--

Cartoon Law VII

Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble
tunnel entrances; others cannot.

This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at
least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface
to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this
theoretical space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he
attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of
art, not of science.

--

Cartoon Law VIII

Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.

Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives
might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed,
accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be
destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate,
elongate, snap back, or solidify.

Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container.

--

Cartoon Law IX

Everything falls faster than an anvil.

--

Cartoon Law X

For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.

This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to
the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of
watching it happen to a duck instead.

--

Cartoon Law Amendment A

A sharp object will always propel a character upward.

When poked (usually in the buttocks) with a sharp object (usually a
pin), a character will defy gravity by shooting straight up, with
great velocity.

--

Cartoon Law Amendment B

The laws of object permanence are nullified for "cool" characters.

Characters who are intended to be "cool" can make previously
nonexistent objects appear from behind their backs at will. For
instance, the Road Runner can materialize signs to express himself
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 large wavelengths.

Their operation can be witnessed by observing the behavior of a
canine suspended over a large vertical drop. Its feet will begin to
fall first, causing its legs to stretch. As the wave reaches its
torso, that part will begin to fall, causing the neck to stretch. As
the head begins to fall, tension is released and the canine will
resume its regular proportions until such time as it strikes the
ground.

--

Cartoon Law Amendment E

Dynamite is spontaneously generated in "C-spaces" (spaces in which
cartoon laws hold).

The process is analogous to steady-state theories of the universe
which postulated that the tensions involved in maintaining a space
would cause the creation of hydrogen from nothing. Dynamite quanta
are quite large (stick sized) and unstable (lit). Such quanta are
attracted to psychic forces generated by feelings of distress in
"cool" characters (see Amendment B, which may be a special case of
this law), who are able to use said quanta to their advantage. One
may imagine C-spaces where all matter and energy result from primal
masses of dynamite exploding. A big bang indeed.



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Subject: More on Mr. Coyote
Forwarded-by: lanih&#64;info.berkeley.edu (Lani Herrmann)
Forwarded-by: Mark Witteman <witteman&#64;iii.com>
Forwarded-by: Don Macnaughtan <MACNAUGHTAN&#64;edlane.lane.edu>
From: Kent Peterson <71644.1645&#64;compuserve.com>

Jen found this gem in the Autobiography of Chuck Young, the creator of
the Road Runner cartoons.

"Rules that we obeyed in the Coyote-Road Runner Series:"

1. The Road Runner cannot harm the coyote exept by going "Beep Beep!"

2. No outside force can harm the Coyote-only his own ineptitude or
the failure of the ACME products.

3. The Coyote could stop anytime -- IF he were not a fanatic. "A
fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his
aim" - George  Santayana.

4. No dialogue ever, except "Beep Beep!"

5. The road Runner must stay on the road - otherwise, logically, he
would not be called Road Runner.

6. All Action must be confined to the natural environment of the two
characters -- the Southwest American desert.

7. All material, tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be
obtained from the ACME Corporation.

8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote's greatest enemy.

9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures

--[0868]--



-snip-

Klaus makes a good point here - there are many jokes, for example,
about the "ontologies" of science fiction works - space craft that
make noise in a vacuum, rockets that have their engines going all the
time yet they are travelling at the same speed. When we are experts
we notice the silly things in movies - like everything that explodes
is always carrying 100,000 litres of petrol. Cartoon always have
things going backwards before they go fowards, things settling when
they stop. These artefacts help develop a grammar of expectation in
the audience so they really belong to the ontologies of aesthetic
objects?

In this sense metaphysics can be seen as ontology.

hope this confuses even more

keith russell
Newcastle OZ

>>>  klaus krippendorff <[log in to unmask]> 05/16/02 02:52pm >>>

to me, it is not a question of whether something exists when we don't
observe it -- i know what i have in my pocket without looking -- but
whether we examine our observation and knowledge as such or deny our
involvement and project what we know onto something we cannot know.
the latter gets us into all kinds of trouble, for example, by
inviting authorities on ontology to construct their reality for
others to be evaluated by.

i think the a more practical use of the word "ontology" in design is
its use in artificial intelligence, for example and already
mentioned, as the principles or logic by which an engineer constructs
an physical artifact, a logic s/he knows but others may not, a logic
that may govern a machine beyond its use by others. this is not
philosophical ontology with the claim of objectivity, but someone's
ontology, which io don't mind acknowledging.

-snip-