Hollywood physics - Popular Science

Assuming speeds of 50 mph, a collision time of 0.015 second, and masses of 80 and 90 kilograms for Cruise and Scott, respectively, the force generated by the impact is an incredibly large 124,000 newtons, all exerted on the upper-right halves of the combatants bodies. Estimating the area of impact to be around .35 square-meters, we can solve for the amount of pressure exerted on their bodies at the point of impact: 350,000 N/m2. Putting these numbers in real-life terms (what, you don't know what one newton of force feels like?): In car-crash studies, any pressure of that magnitude on the human body results in a 50-50 chance of surviving, with those who do survive coming away with massive internal trauma. Not only do Cruise and Scott survive the initial impact, they don't appear to have even a broken bone between them, when. Iin reality, Tom would need a whole lot of nontraditional healing to recover from this one.

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Thanks to good old Archimedes's principle, we can calculate the amount of air that would need to be displaced to perform the lifting, and thus the necessary increase in volume due to the drink's carbonation of the bodies of Charlie and Grandpa Joe. As you can see, to counteract the force of his mass (here we estimate his mass to be 70 kilograms), Grandpa would have to swell up to a massive 54 cubic meters-if he was a sphere, he would be five meters across (that's over 15 feet). For a more familiar reference, that´s at least twice as big as poor Violet's sudden rotundity after sampling Wonka's experimental three-course gum. Which, if you´re interested, would need to have a density of 6 x 109 kg/m3 to contain enough juice to fill Violet to the size depicted- that's four or five thousand times the density of an average metal. Watch your fillings!

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