Crazy Math: How to survive a Wagon Wheel Rolling over your head

There is some amazing Middle School Maths in The Cake Server on Joseph’s Machines. 

eg. Calculate the length of the arc of a circle to fit your HEAD! Watch for it.

Besides, this is so much FUN!

1. Stuntman Math: Car Stunts

“With enough stupidity you can get any car to roll over” (MSN AUTO)

What stuntmen and women need is maths!

Maths is essential to the process, from calculating speeds and braking distances to looking at the ratio of the amount of film shot to the length of time of the end sequence. The stunt and crash is outlined, and the co-ordinator explains how he must calculate speeds and stopping distances carefully.

So you want to be a stuntman?

First think of the pain.

Mark Eiden, 52, a professional stuntman (pictured) who is not only afraid of heights, but was once told he likely wouldn’t walk again. Eiden’s had surgery on both arms and shoulders, five knee surgeries, six nasal reconstructions, foot and hand surgery and a facial cast. He fell off the top of a stunt car at 40 mph when the tyre blew. He gaffer taped his ear and continued, despite severe concussion. Northern Express Michigan

If you still want to be a stuntman do the Maths:

Rolling a Car:

You can use quick handbrake turn, speed around a corner, fishtail into the curb or some other lunatic thing. The most controlled way to roll a car is to use a ramp.

These ramps often have a kicker at the end to add extra lift. Ramp calculations can be complicated, but the simplest way to look at the maths is to determine the angle a car will roll ie. When the Centre of Gravity moves over the base.

Centre of Gravity vs Base Width

The distance between the front wheels in cars is often called the track width.

Table from Accident Reconstruction Website

So the Lamobgini Diablo is very hard to roll (build a higher ramp) and it therefore beats the SUV for stability every time.

Balancing on 2 Wheels

A more skilled stunt involves driving a car on two wheels. A very skilled stunt driver can lift the car onto wheels by snaking the car back and forth across the road until it balances on 2 wheels.

From the Centre of Gravity vs Base angles above you can see that the SUV is the easiest car to balance of 2 wheels.

But there is nothing quite as crazy as this SUV stunt:

Saudis changing car tyres, just insane.

View full video here.

Safe Driving Info here

 

 

 

3. STUNTMAN MATH: Motorbike Jump

This is a repost of Mathspig’s very popular Stuntman/woman series.

Star Stuntmen

Star Stuntmen Monte Perin (pictured) has involved many films, including “Spider-Man,” “Star Trek, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and portraying Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stunt double in “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.”

Perhaps his most difficult stunt was landing his Harley in an open boxcar of a moving train for Disney’s 2008 Adam Sandler movie “Bedtime Stories”. In a career of over 25 years Perin has broken “almost everything” including both his arms, legs, knees, feet, ankles, several ribs, his back and his pelvis. See Confessions of a stuntman

Veteran stuntman Evel Knievel (1938 – 2007) was the pioneer of many stunt jumps. Here he is jumping 10 cars and 3 vans in 1973.

His injuries are legendary:

More Evel Knievel

Ramp Design

The angle of the kicker in ramp design can vary from 10⁰ – 70⁰ (See below)

 

Moto-X Ramp Jump Maths

 

 

 

As any bike nut knows increasing speed and angle of take off will increase jump distance.

Here is a graph from final gear for speed vs angle to jump 90m.

 

METHOD 1 is approximate (See STEP 1 & STEP 2 above), but as METHOD 2 produces the same ans (See above), it is very useful.

You will find a thoroughly detailed calc for STUNT JUMP MATHS here:

And everything you ever wanted to know about PHYSICS OF STUNT JUMPS here. 

4. If you are involved in a car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion, you will not go into shock.

Here are just a few of the popular disaster movies:
Avalanche (2001), Earthquake (1974), Armageddon (Involves meteors 1998), Deep Impact (More meteors 1998), 2012 (Tsunamis, earthquakes, the lot. 2009), Twister (tornadoes 1996), Backdraft (Fire. 1991) and Towering Inferno (They don’t make thunderous movie titles like that anymore. (1974)  

But what percentage of people involved in, say, an explosion suffer from SHOCK! There are many statistics about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) available. In one excellent study in The National Centre for PTSD Journal involved an explosion in a paint factory in Norway (1976), the 246 employees were ranked for their exposure to shock as follows:.

A. 66 Narrow escape

B. 59 Involved but not in danger

C. 121 Not present on the day.

 80% Group A suffered shock and PTSD. Both Groups A & B showed symptoms of PTSD 7 months later. If, say, a plane crashed into your school sports field and your class survived with minor injuries calculate  how many students in your maths class would go into SHOCK and how many would be left to take action using the above statistics.

These stats can also be used as a fraction or decimal exercise using 0.8 or 4/5 as the fraction of students in shock.

More information at the Health Dept WA

NOTE: Many schools in Australia today not only practise fire drills but terrorist attack lockdowns.

5. You can jump out of an airplane that is about to crash and catch the baddie who took the last parachute.

 The names Bond, James Bond. In Moonraker  with Roger Moore (1979) 007 jumps out of a plane without a parachute to avoid an assassination attempt. He catches up with, Jaws, arch-baddie, in mid-air and takes his parachute. Jaws survives his fall by landing on a big top circus tent.

In Point Break with FBI agent Johnny Utah, Keanu Reeves, leaps from a skydiving plane after Patrick Swayzes’ characer, Bohdi, who has taken the last parachute. Utah catches Bohdi in mid-air, and after a tense confrontation with a gun, both survive using Bodhi’s chute. The remake was in 2015.

There are more movie and real life stories at the  Free Fall Maths link.

Note: We’ll assume Bhodi and Utah have equal horizontal velocities (plane exit velocity plus wind) so the following calculations only involve the vertical or falling velocity. The terminal velocities used for Bhodi and Utah are realistic estimates. 

9. A single match or candle will light a room the size of a football stadium.

 

This is the rework of a previous post.

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:

80 candles just to go to the toilet!!!!!!

1. Movie Stunt Math: Rolling a CAR

“With enough stupidity you can get any car to roll over” (MSN AUTO)

What stuntmen and women need is maths!

Maths is essential to the process, from calculating speeds and braking distances to looking at the ratio of the amount of film shot to the length of time of the end sequence. The stunt and crash is outlined, and the co-ordinator explains how he must calculate speeds and stopping distances carefully.

So you want to be a stuntman?

First think of the pain.

Mark Eiden, 52, a professional stuntman (pictured) who is not only afraid of heights, but was once told he likely wouldn’t walk again. Eiden’s had surgery on both arms and shoulders, five knee surgeries, six nasal reconstructions, foot and hand surgery and a facial cast. He fell off the top of a stunt car at 40 mph when the tyre blew. He gaffer taped his ear and continued, despite severe concussion. Northern Express Michigan

If you still want to be a stuntman do the Maths:

Rolling a Car:

You can use quick handbrake turn, speed around a corner, fishtail into the curb or some other lunatic thing. The most controlled way to roll a car is to use a ramp.

These ramps often have a kicker at the end to add extra lift. Ramp calculations can be complicated, but the simplest way to look at the maths is to determine the angle a car will roll ie. When the Centre of Gravity moves over the base.

Centre of Gravity vs Base Width

The distance between the front wheels in cars is often called the track width.

Table from Accident Reconstruction Website

So the Lamobgini Diablo is very hard to roll (build a higher ramp) and it therefore beats the SUV for stability every time.

Balancing on 2 Wheels

A more skilled stunt involves driving a car on two wheels. A very skilled stunt driver can lift the car onto wheels by snaking the car back and forth across the road until it balances on 2 wheels.

From the Centre of Gravity vs Base angles above you can see that the SUV is the easiest car to balance of 2 wheels.

But there is nothing quite as crazy as this SUV stunt:

Saudis changing car tyres, just insane.

View full video here.

Safe Driving Info here