Every action hero gets into a fistfight. James Bond, Jason Bourne, Indiana Jones. Then there are all the stars known for their fight scenes. Sylvester Stallone ( Rocky), Arnold Schwarzenegger (True Lies), Jackie Chan (Any movie), Bruce Willis (Die Hard 1,2, 3 etc), Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon I, II, III etc), Jean Claude Van Damm (Blood Sport, Street Fighter), Brad Pitt (Fight Club), Fast & Furious 1,2,3 and so on.
But can the human body take this punishment?
We can work it out. Measurements taken at The University of Manchester have shown that local boxing hero Ricky ‘The Hitman’ Hatton really does live up to his name. (DailyScience)
Action heroes such as Indiana Jones or even film kids like Tom Sawyer or The Goonies who go into a cave, anabandoned house, a crypt or a catacomb light the entire place with one match, one candle, a lighter or a cellphone.
Is this real?
Now mathspigs, if you are interested in a career in stage/film lighting or even architecture you will need this maths.
60Watt light globe tells us how much power it uses. But some 60W globes are brighter than others. Light is measured with weird units.
USA uses Foot-candles. Can you imagine the pickup line ‘You brighten up my world like a footcandle’? A foot-candle is the brightness of a candle 1 foot away. Now think of a bubble around the candle. Brightness is mostly measured using one square foot or one square metre of that bubble:
1 LUMEN = 1 Footcandle/ft squared
1 LUX = 1 footcandle/m squared
Don’t get too hassled by these units. As a rough rule:
1 candle = 1 LUX
From graph you can see by 3m a Birthday Cake is not very bright even in a haunted house or crypt.
Challenge: Draw a graph of the brightness of your own Birthday Cake!
Big Challenge:Draw a graph of your Teacher’s Birthday Cake!!!!!! Ahhhh!!!!
We know:
1 candle = 1 LUX
Now compare the brightness of 1 candle to the brightness of other sources of light:
If you want sufficient light to live your everyday life you’d need:
This is a rework of a previous post with full calcs.
Every volcano disaster movie from Volcano (1997) with Tommy Lee Jones to Dante’s Peak (1997) with Pierce Brosnan someone somewhere tries to out run a lava flow. Is this possible?
The answer is maybe. You will find everything you want to know about lava flowshere.
On January 10,1977, at Nyiragongo lava sprang from the sides of the volcano moving at speeds up to 40 miles per hour. About 70 people were killed.
Measuring the temperature of lava. Photograph by R.L. Christiansen, U.S. Geological Survey, January 9, 1973.
The fastest Lava flows recorded were in Hawaiiin 1950 when Mauna Loa erupted. The lava traveled at 6 miles per hour through thick forest. But once the lava flows became established and good channels developed, the lava in the channels was flowing at up to 60 mph.
Every volcano disaster movie from Volcano (1997) with Tommy Lee Jones to Dante’s Peak (1997) withPierce Brosnan someone somewhere tries to out run a lava flow. Is this possible?
The answer is maybe. You will find everything you want to know about lava flows here.
On January 10,1977, at Nyiragongolava sprang from the sides of the volcano moving at speeds up to 40 miles per hour (60 km/hr). About 70 people were killed.
Measuring the temperature of lava. Photograph by R.L. Christiansen, U.S. Geological Survey, January 9, 1973. The fastest Lava flows recorded were in Hawaiiin 1950 when Mauna Loa erupted. The lava traveled at 10 kilometers per hour through thick forest. But once the lava flows became established and good channels developed, the lava in the channels was flowing at up to 97 kph.
The main concern when jumping out off a building is that the airbag (cardboard boxes) cover the drop zone.
The maths calculations involved in jumping off a building are straightforward. You might like to check out How Maths Solved a real murder.
Jump Height that Kills
It doesn’t take much of a fall to cause damage. Sean Hughes, professor of surgery at Imperial College, London. Says “From a height of 3m you could fracture your spine,” he says. “At around 10m, you’re looking at very serious injuries.” (The Guardian, 20 MAY 2014)
Stunt Jump from building from standing start
As this jump – as in most base jumps – involves a standing start:
In every volcano disaster movie from Volcano (1997) with Tommy Lee Jones to Dante’s Peak (1997) with Pierce Brosnan someone somewhere tries to out run a lava flow.
Is this possible? (See movie cliché busted by maths here.)
Now a lava flow from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano is threatening tiny town of Pahoa, Hawaii again. (below).
You will find excellent information about the Kilauea and other volcanoes at the
As the temperature of lava exceeds 10000 C there are very few ways to stop lava. According to the Taylor Kate Brown SMH (10 SEPT 2014) options include:
Bombing
Blasting (it with cold water)
Barricading it
Or adding concrete.
What if you are on your own.
Can you out run lava?
Lets do the maths.
Lava from Kilauea travels 17 yards per hour so the lava velocity is:
One of the greatest dangers in a volcano eruption is not the lava flow OR being hit by a lump of flying lava or rock, but by being choked by the fast moving scorching hot pyroclastic cloud.
In 1991 pyroclastic cloud blew out of the side of Mount Unzen in Japan. NASA has an excellent diagrams for such an event here.
According to the NASA website:
Highly mobile, these flows reach velocities of up to 400 kilometers (250 miles) per hour and can spread as far as 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the eruption point.
Can you out run a pyroclastic cloud?
Here is what happened in 1991 when the pyroclastic cloud blew out of the side of Mount Unzen in Japan.
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