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Showing results for tags 'pokemon'.
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Remember those cartoon kids shows where lightning bolts sent you flying into the sky with your pants on fire? I’m talking about a Team Rocket blasting off again sort of scenario. I always thought those were pretty funny, but how would they work in real life? Let’s assume that by the Laws of Disney magic, being struck with lightning instantly converts all of its energy into kinetic energy for the object hit. So, a 50 kg cartoon character gets pegged. The average lightning bolt has about 5 GJ of electrical energy in it, and contact lasts only about 30 µs. The character starts at rest. Kinetic Energy = .5mv^2, so we can calculate the new speed of the character to be 14,142.14 m/s. Let’s say this is actually James from Team Rocket, so of course he shoots up into the air at an angle of about 75° with the ground. Using the kinematics equations this time we can find that his maximum height is about 9,510,832.84 m. I guess they were right all along: James would disappear almost instantly, like a flash in the sky. Huh.
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We all knew this would come eventually, from a person like myself. Personally, I love pokemon videogames- they're fun, entertaining, and you can do so many different things in them. Much better that the televisions shows, for sure. While I was pondering how to tie in my nerdy-ness into a physics post, I came up with this. Hopefully it's not too terrible So, to begin, let us dive into the game itself-- literally. Within this "small" (by the standards when it was first made, at least) pokemon Gold cartridge lies a mess of wires, chips, resisters, etc, and the battery that powers it. It's a complex circut, basically! When inserted into the game boy, a current is sent out into the game, reading all the information stored on it as the game loads up. Physics is why it works. Physics is the reason that the electrical currents move through the game, why the save data is read, and why you can even play it on the gamboy in the first place. End of story. Not a single videogame would work without physics. While playing the actual coded game, as well, physics is at work. In some games, logic doesn't seem to be at play- the physics of it doesn't match up. Pokemon games are actually fairly realistic, compared to some other video games. When you jump off the ledge, you fall down. When you throw the pokeball, it doesn't float into the sky- it continues on it's path and hits the pokemon. In some of the newer games, when crossing a log, you can fall off. I may be tired and rambling at this point, but that's because I can. In some games, like Harvest Moon, there is no logic. Crops growing in less than a month? Cows getting pregnent with a potion? Teleporting? I dare you to go and play one of your videogames and analize it. Is the physic within it logical, or not? Take some time to take in the world around you- none of it would be there without physics. It's just that important!
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