Toon Physics

"I know this defies the law of gravity, but, you see, I never studied law!"
- Bugs Bunny, High Diving Hare (1949)

Mr. Schmidt's period 3/4 honors Physics class had no idea what they were in for when the teacher assigned a project which could be done on the Physics topic of its creator's choice. After much, er, reasearch I presented the following straight-faced to the class, along with a few slide photos and clips from Chuck Jones' "To Beep of Not to Beep" and "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century", then Friz Freleng's "High Diving Hare." I here attach in its entirety my written report. I hope it informs and enlightens. Doc.

Nowhere, perhaps, have art and science merged more happily than in the animated cartoon. The thought of using a flurry of loosely-connected drawings to suggest a whole living monde dessinČ was early on thought of as lunacy, and rightly so. But then the French, and Windsor McCay, and Ub Iwerks did it, beautifully, and the animated cartoon quickly became the best of "low" art. Sure, the average American might give a nod to Da Vinci and Raphael, but they have fonder memories of ducks, mice, and wabbits. The efforts of Charles M. "Chuck" Jones, Fred Bean "Tex" Avery, Isadore "Friz" Freleng, Bob McKimson, Bob Clampett, Joe Hanna and Bill Barbera, and, of course, the original Walt Disney Studio, at low pay and for unappreciative producers (Leon Schlesinger, Eddie Selzer, and Fred Quimby to name a few) are now finally getting their due in the hearts and minds of those who grew up with them, and today's animators, like John Kricfalusi, Henry Selick, and the Tom Ruegger team, ply their inky trade with a century of laugher behind them.

Yet cartoons walk a thin line in regards to our favorite subject, Physics. In order to be recognizable as real beings cartoon characters must not, ironically, directly mimic real life. Characters that are hand-traced, or Rotoscoped, from film "float" across the screen - they have little weight and less charm, and are not believable. We accept Bambi as a real fawn, but the work required to elicit that acceptance involved great exaggeration and a tight simplification, if not ignorance, of the laws of nature. To go even further into the abyss we can examine a character like Bugs Bunny, who resembles his lagomorphic real-world counterpart in name only.

The Warner Bros. cartoons, classics of the genre and exponentially more playful and bizarre than such as Disney, are enough to make a Physics teacher break out in hives if they were to try and fully grasp it all. Few laws of our own physical world are given a nod. Just enough to make the characters believable. Bugs needs to walk on the ground. Good. We'll call it "gravity." After that you're on your own.

This "Physics of necessity" was done with only the finished film in mind. Even still, patterns inevitably emerge. The goal is the entertainment of the audience, and the audience laughs only when they can understand the forces at play onscreen, irrational as these forces might be.

The Coyote fails, but always in the same way, and for the same reason - he is pursuing a goal (the catching of the Roadrunner) long past the point where the reason for same (the eating of the Roadrunner) has been forgotten. The creators (Chuck Jones, primarily) identified with this, and so does the audience. Thus when the same Coyote keeps getting hit by the same boulder, or tossed over the same cliff, there is no confusion - it's what the Coyote does.

They also love to see the right fellow "get it." If Tweety Bird, the little guy, is getting hurt in the least the audience cringes. Yet Sylvester, the brute, can swallow explosives and they smile. This leads us to a theory without which the whole of Toon Physics is undecipherable.

All pathos is relative.

We drop a boulder on a cartoon character.

Superman catches it. Tom (of Tom and Jerry), or Sylvester, is flattened by it, then pops out dazed but unharmed. The Coyote gives a pathetic look, pulls out a pitifully small umbrella, and cringes before being flattened - he's a pro. Popeye struggles beneath it until the miraculous advent of spinach, at which point he tosses it out of shot. Yosemite Sam take the hit, and pops out shorter and fuming. Tex Avery's Droopy catches it, impossibly, with one finger. Woody Woodpecker takes the hit, and appears to enjoy it.

Yet:
For Bambi, Snow White, and in fact most of the Disney staple (with the possible exception of Donald, Goofy etc.) such a situation would be horrible to contemplate (unless you're one of the growing crowd of Eisner Disney-jaded, dying to see Bambi get it). We're tempted to believe that, if crushed, they would bleed.

Yet:
If Beavis and Butthead were to get hit by that boulder, yes they'd bleed, but we know they'd survive, and go off to get some nachos.

As for such as Jerry (of Tom and Jerry), Tweety Bird, the Roadrunner etc. we know they would not bleed, but we'd rather not see them hurt anyway. They're not designed for it.

Then there's Bugs Bunny, who notices the boulder casually but is not under it. He's long since gotten out of the way.

This brings us to our second, and related theory:

All occurrences in a cartoon are relative. We may half-jokingly call this the Theory of Universal Cartoon Relativity. The character comes first, the laws of Physics next. Somehow Bugs Bunny always wins. Elmer Fudd always loses. Daffy Duck almost always loses, but deserves it. It's hard to pin down the exact traits which cause a character to be a winner or loser, but coolness under pressure helps with the former, and misplaced intelligence and farcically poor temper with the latter. Otherwise you could merely, like Elmer Fudd, be a bald old schmuck with a gun. Schmuck becomes aggressor, and the aggressor always loses.

Bugs, of course, does nasty things to Elmer and all the other aggressors he comes across, but the difference is vital - he has been provoked. Elmer has come up to his peaceful burrow with a shotgun. Marvin the Martian is building an interspace bypass through the earth, and must demolish it. Whatever the reason, Bugs is now free to do whatever he pleases - his peaceful existence has been invaded, and, as he would put it, "Of course you realize - this means war!" From this point on, Bugs should not lose. If the laws of Physics get in the way, this being a cartoon they will rearrange themselves to better fit the situation.

The technical term for a character with this vital ability is a "cool" character.

I will now present a few basic laws of Toon Physics which crop up often. I say "often" rather than "always" because all these "laws" are relative to character and situation. I call them "laws" for lack of a better term. These apply mostly to a "winning" or "losing" character in a Warner Bros. - or MGM - type cartoon, this type selected because they break, rather than just exaggerate, the real-world laws of Physics more than most.

Here they are, then, arranged by category:

Speed and Motion

A body in pursuit will remain in pursuit, until it has achieved its goal. The villain wolf takes a taxi, a plane, a speedboat, a helicopter, a liferaft, and a rickshaw to the most secluded spot on earth and locks the iron door behind him. Yet when he turns around, Droopy is right there. This applies to "loser" characters as well, and accounts for the Coyote's single-minded pursuit of the Roadrunner.

Any body passing at sufficiently high speed 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 direct-pressure explosions and reckless cowards 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.

The time required for an object to fall 20 stories is greater or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down 20 flights to attempt to capture it. Such an object is inevitably priceless, the effort to save it inevitably unsuccessful.

NOTE: While the attempt will sometimes be initially successful, an essentially valueless object such as a feather or anvil falling on the head of the character will indirectly cause the destruction of the priceless one after a short pause in which the character who has caught the object has taken a deep breath. On a side note, the feather, anvil, or other object in question is likely to have been dropped by a mouse, if the character trying to save it is a cat.

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 a cloud of altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled, or playing a furious solo on a broken drum set. All of the above simulate our own vision's trailing retention of images, and in many cases can be taken for same. This is deviated only from when the trailing images take on their own personalities. A "wacky" character has the option of deliberate self-replication at manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required for self-mass-liberation.

The shortest distance between two points is a zigzag. This law is mainly used when a character is running or chasing someone into the sunset at the end of a cartoon.

Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly. Forget air resistance, forget friction. 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 the stooge's surcease.

Corollary - The feet of a running character or the wheels of a spinning auto need never touch the ground. Here fleeing turns to flight.

Corollary - A body at rest can suddenly zip into a blur of motion, leaving but a dust cloud behind, if their own fear factor is sufficiently high. A cartoon character who has been severely startled and attempts to run away from his/her adversary seemingly possesses infinite inertia for a short time. The character's feet move at incredible rates, often blurring into an indistinguishable circular haze. The energy generated by this furious rotation is often sufficient to actually excavate a pit in the ground beneath the character attempting to flee, yet he/she is unable to move for one critical second or so, during which the adversary may almost make physical contact. Yet after the initial period of resistance, this overwhelming inertia releases suddenly, and the character vanishes at a speed too great for the eye to follow.

Corollary: It is occasionally observable that the period of infinite inertia may be prolonged if the character has some amusing aside to utter, either to the audience or to the pursuing adversary. In this case, the inertial effect vanishes upon completion of the amusing remark. This, of course, can simply be written off to snappy timing.


Gravity (or a comparable force)

Any body suspended in space will remain suspended 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 9.8 meters per second per second takes over.

Corollary - Any species capable of flight, upon distraction or vertigo, will lose ability of flight. This is a converse of the rather dangerous theory that any two feathers held in each and and waved will (temporarily) give flight to any character that does so. Many coyotes have been maimed in this manner.

Some objects fall faster than others. Gravity, like all occurrences in the cartoon space, is relative. Thus it has had to make a few changes to allow for characters such as Wile E. Coyote. It is not known when and how this favoritism normally takes place, but it is known that if Wile E. Coyote is falling next to an anvil, the anvil will appear to slow down and maneuver itself, gradually, above Wile E's head in time for the drop.

Gravity, in certain cases, is transmitted by slow-moving waves of large wavelengths. Their operation can be witnessed by observing the behavior of a character 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, all tension is released and the character once again assumes its original proportions until such time as it strikes the ground.

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 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. An additional use of this property relates to laws seen earlier in the "motion" section - The feet of a running character or the wheels of a spinning auto need never touch the ground; here fleeing turns to flight.

Corollary: All forces of gravity are negated equally well by concentrated pain. A sharp thumbtack in a character's bottom will result in a sharp jump upward. An explosive force may be enough to propel a character out of the Earth's gravitational field entirely before they fall back, unharmed but furious, to their previous location.

Corollary: Such upward motion will usually be restricted by an overhang of the nearest cliff wall, even though said cliff wall was never visible at any other point in the cartoon. Apply this, again, to the Coyote.

There is always a "down." In the Newtonian model gravity is a force generated between two objects. If an objects, such as a planet, is sufficiently large all nearby objects will be drawn to, and remain upon, it. Yet even if Duck Dodgers and Marvin the Martian have demolished the planet they stand on, and it is now the size of a moth-eaten plum pudding, they will still be able to stand on it, and when Dodgers pushes Marvin off it he hangs from a few roots on the bottom.

The traditional sense of gravity as the attraction between two objects is almost ignored in cartoons. There may be, perhaps, a force drawing anvils to Wile E. Coyote, and bullets to Daffy Duck, but besides that gravity is where you find it. Marvin here is merely falling the way the camera points.

Corollary: The "down" concept can be manipulated. Buster Bunny walks into a room and is surprised to find the bizarre Gogo Dodo standing nonchalantly on the ceiling. He looks about him confusedly and then falls to the ceiling. The camera does a 180 degree flip and the ceiling has become the floor. This trick required massive psychic effort on Gogo's part to pull off, but it is possible.

A similar principle is applied thus: Bugs Bunny stands on the end of a long diving board. Yosemite Sam approaches, snickering, with a saw and proceeds to saw the board off. After a moment's pause, the board is still standing, inexplicably, in the air, but its platform, and Sam with it, have crashed abruptly to the ground. Bugs has merely exercised the relative nature of toon gravity. Characters with this ability are usually nonchalant about it, and it works for them only in the most extreme of situations.


C-Space and More Inexplicable Things

Few injuries are as bad as they look. Despite apparent bodily mutilation, cartoon characters are more humiliated than harmed by the various misfortunes which befall them. In cartoons with looser views of physical laws the laws about bones breaking seem to go first.

Certain bodies can pass through a solid wall painted to resemble a tunnel entrance; others cannot. This trompe de 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 science.

NOTE: It has been observed that some toons, after much practice, actually have been able to enter holes painted onto solid backdrops while chasing otherwise unsuspecting toons into these holes. However, the consequence of obtaining this ability is that they almost immediately collide with an exiting train or truck.

Corollary: Portable Holes work.

An object is free fall over a body will remain in free fall over a body, and there's nothing the body can do about it. This is known as the "Vertically Inevitable Doom Principle." When an object such as a boulder, piano, anvil, etc. starts to cast its shadow starting its descent on a character, said character can try to get out of the object's path but will either:
A) Only run in place inches over the ground.
B) Move out of way only to discover that the object has "followed" him/her.

Exception: "Cool" characters, and only "cool" characters, may move out the path of the object by simply stepping out of the way at the last possible second.

Vehicle location follows the laws of uncertaincy. A vehicle travelling along a straight path which extends to the horizon uninterrupted remains in state of indeterminacy-- existing invisibly at all points along the road simultaneously - until its waveform is collapsed by a villain entering the road. This causes the vehicle to coalesce into an observable form at that location, maintaining high velocity. Classical cartoon physics take over at this point.

Plain-language Result: As soon as Wile E. Coyote steps into the road, the bus will appear to run him down.

A rabbit can dig a burrow from here to there in less than 20 seconds and emerge spotlessly clean. The speed of their construction is impressive and breaks most known laws of fixed location. Other species, such as ducks, may be able to follow if need be, but they usually lack the training.

Corollary: Any hole dug in the ground by a non-cool character will eventually lead to China. Any toon entering China via the hole will not be allowed to leave until they have been given Chinese garb or food, or heard the sound of a gong.

Corollary: Any hole dug from within a prison or jail will lead to a point underneath a person of authority (e.g. warden or policeman), or under a body of water, which proceeds to drench the poor sap, or into another jail cell. Prison inmates, usually large-sized brutes, or mere dimwits, come with a large degree of the aforementioned "loser factor" built in.

The postal service operates in accordance with uncertainty laws. The placement of a piece of paper within a conveniently located mailbox will cause the immediate appearance of a much-needed item, often a large weapon or other such item designed for the elimination of the opposing character. This is sometimes known as the "Law of UPS." It is not yet understood. Writing a letter to order something, obtain information, or otherwise communicate will get an instantaneous response. Often more than instantaneous, as usually a trip to the mailbox to mail an order will be stopped short by a postman who will take the letter and hand the recipient the package ordered. The coyote uses this property to great effect in his dealings with the ACME Corporation. This conglomerate is capable of supplying virtually any item at a moments notice. In addition, these products, no matter how conceptually bizarre, always meet advertised specifications. However, this is of no avail to the coyote as, being himself, the products and physical laws will eventually conspire against him. He has particular trouble with catapults.

Cartoon time is quantified into units of 1/24 seconds. However, in the event that seasons must change, or other significant time must pass, days pass at a rate of 2 1/3 a second, assuming a calendar is available to lose pages. The inverse of this is of course true, if any wait is required. Often extras will turn to skeletons, and large amounts of spider webs accumulate in the area.

Cuteness of non-human toons is a function of size. A theoretical particle called the "Cuteon" has been described to help explain this relationship. The theory goes thus: Each toon character appears to contain the same number of Cuteons. This means that the percentage of Cuteons is inversely proportional to the size of the toon. Hence, the smaller the cartoon character, the cuter it will be.

Any gas, when injected into a toon, becomes lighter than air. The gas is injected in very high amount, causing said toon to expand to many times its original volume, and then will become lighter than air, thus causing said toon to float. A toon thus inflated will behave like a hollow rubber balloon. Use of a sharp object (say, a needle) will cause said toon to immediately deflate and to propel across the room or landscape at a velocity as predicted via Newton's Equal-and-Opposite Law of Force.

Necessity plus Will provokes spontaneous generation. Dangerously palpable objects - such as mallets, dynamite, pies, and alluring female attire - can be manifested from what might previously have been considered "thin" air, but only when the friction of immediate jeopardy makes the object's appearance imperative. The controversial "pocket" theory suggests these objects are drawn from unseen recesses in a character's costume, or from a storehouse immediately off-screen, but this merely defers the question of how any absolutely apt object is instantaneously available.

Some theorists have suggested the existence of an entirely separate form of space, dubbed "C-Space," from which objects are generated. The theory goes something like this:

The process is analogous to steady-state theories of the universe which postulate that the tensions involved in maintaining a space would cause the creation of hydrogen from nothing. The C-Space here causes the creation of dynamite from nothing. Dynamite quanta are quite large (stick-sized) and quite unstable (lit). Such quanta are attracted to psychic forces generated by thoughts of distress in "hero" characters, 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.

At any rate, it is known that the laws of object permanence are nullified for those in need.

Complication: Only objects capable of being lifted by the toon can be produced from behind his/her back, unless they are to be used to clobber an opponent.

Complication: Only objects needed by the toon to express him/herself (e.g., signs for Road Runner or Calamity Coyote), or props needed for the situation or to humiliate an opponent for a laugh may be produced in this manner. Objects that serve solely to gratify the toon (money, a Porsche, etc.) cannot be produced in this manner.

Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent. Cartoon cats possess more deaths than even the traditional nine lives afford. They can be sliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few minutes of blinking self-pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back or solidify.

Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container. The cat is forced into such a container as a tomato can after a long drop into garbage or a bewildering trip through a factory's conveyor system, leaving a bewildered but otherwise okay cat within. This suggests that feline matter may have the properties of a liquid. Cat owners, of course, have been suggesting this for years.

NOTE: Early in the history of cartoons the properties of the cat were known, and many minds worked on the problem of how to recreate feline properties in other, similarly pathetic species. It is possible that some small success in these aims may have been achieved as certain vaguely similar properties have now been observed in dogs, coyotes, and even ducks.

For every vengeance, there is an equal and opposite revengeance. This is one law that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead.





An additional note was attached here saying:

None of these laws are yet fully understood. The debate rages as to their meaning. Recent theoretical work suggests that the use of "fuzzy logic" may provide further refinement of these anomalies. "Fuzzy logic" advocates hold that the Theorem may in fact exhibit different resolutions for cartoon characters with fuzzy surfaces, e.g. rabbits, cats, and even borderline examples such as Yosemite Sam. However, like the Acme Institute's recent "lukewarm fusion" project, this approach is regarded with considerable skepticism.

Selected Bibliography