Movie myths meet movie maths
Some moments on the screen stay with us forever, but not always for the right reasons.
For some avid film and TV fans, there are certain scenes that have left us scratching our heads, inspecting from every angle, and making frame-by-frame comparisons to try and come up with an answer that tells us what we want to hear.
After all, we’ve all had our say over that infamous door and those two fated souls in the middle of the ocean, haven’t we?
Luckily, those in the know - mathematicians - have put their brains to the task of solving it for us, sharing their findings as they debunk some of the screen world’s more memorable moments.
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The door, Titanic (1997)
Could Jack have fit on the door too? Could Rose have saved him?
Such questions have sat with fans of the blockbuster film Titanic since its release, when the end of the film saw Rose and Jack trying to save themselves with a scrap of the ship’s debris - a door - in the middle of the freezing North Atlantic Sea.
As anyone who’s seen the film could tell you, Jack gave up his spot so that Rose might survive, but many have refused to accept that this was necessary. They believe, instead, that Jack could have fit there with her, ultimately saving them both from further tragedy.
And a group of girls at school in Adelaide believe they know exactly how it could have been done.
The solution? Sliding their life jackets beneath the door.
“We looked at how buoyant the door would have been, and how that would have changed if there were people on top of that,” 15-year-old Abigail explained to The Daily Telegraph, adding that “there was a lot of exploring and testing, and we had to fiddle with different buoyancies and look at what materials were realistic for that time.”
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The jump, Speed (1994)
From start to finish, Speed is a wild ride. And while many questions about the logistics of the high-speed action bus ride have arisen since the film’s release, one tops the list more often than not - could Jack really have made that jump?
At one point in the film, Jack and his runaway bus - which he must keep travelling at a speed of just over 80km/h to prevent the entire thing from exploding - are faced with an incomplete road, and he is forced to make the jump over the gap to give himself and his passengers any hope of survival.
While the film’s characters succeed, and make it out of there alright, the people at ZME Science were not quite so eager to leave it at that.
Instead, they have studied the scene, and put the likelihood of survival in such a situation to the test. With a few handy equations and crucial bits of info - the gap was 15m, their speed 108km/h - they came to the conclusion that the bus more than likely would have fallen into the gap, rather than landing safely on the other side.
This, of course, means that the detonation would have occurred, and the outcome would have been drastically different to what transpired on the screen.
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The bullet, The Matrix (1999)
While The Matrix is held in high regard by many cinema enthusiasts, from its concept alone to its iconic fight scenes, there are those who’ve come out of the films with a few more questions than what its creators ever intended.
Namely, questions over how exactly Neo managed to dodge that bullet.
While attempting to save Morhepus from Agent Smith, Neo goes head-to-head against agents in a rooftop fight. A shot is made at Neo, and he deftly dodges the potentially fatal wound by bending all the way back, with the bullet clearing the air above him, leaving him unscathed.
It’s a scene that wowed audiences worldwide with its slow motion approach, and its attention to detail, but for one mathematician, it was exactly this that drew her curiosity. Could Neo actually have pulled that off?
According to Kerry Cue, the answer is no.
After working out the distance between Neo and the agent (roughly 12m), the logistics of the weapon, and the speed at which it was moving, Kerry worked her way to her conclusion.
The bullet itself would take 0.04 seconds to get to Neo. And as a human’s average reaction time is 0.25 seconds, it’s impossible that Neo would have been able to make that impressive save in the real world.
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The sofa, Friends (1994-2004)
Would pivoting really have helped Ross, Rachel, and Chandler get that unfortunate sofa up the stairwell of their New York apartment building?
In the heat of the moment, Ross certainly seemed to think so, but as fans of the sitcom know, their efforts were in vain. Unable to complete their mission, the friends opted to cut it up instead.
Some weren’t satisfied with this ‘easy’ way out, and one mathematician put her brain to the test trying to prove that it would have been a possible feat to accomplish.
And it was - if only the trio had bothered to take measurements.
Caroline Zunckel - a data science consultant - ran approximately 10,000 different simulations using various measurements for both the stairs and the couch, all to prove her point. Luckily for her, she discovered that she was right, and that the furniture only required some tilting upwards to get around that problem corner.
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