Post created by: Braden
So I was watching the older movie "Hancock," with Will Smith earlier today and I thought it would be a great topic to write about. In the movie, Will Smith plays this super-hero named Hancock. There are a few scenes where physics is completely ignored. The scene I am interested in, is the one where Hancock stops a moving train just by standing in front of it. I wanted a better understanding so I looked up how much force this train had behind it. I remembered the equation Force=Mass * Acceleration from previous schooling. So I plugged in some numbers from google into this equation. An average train has and velocity of 18m/s and a mass of 5,000,000kg. Acceleration= V/T. The time it took for the train to stop was .5 seconds. (Acceleration= 18/.5). acceleration= 36m/s^2. Now to get force we multiply acceleration (36m/s^2) by mass (5,000,000kg) = 180,000,000N!
According to google, it only takes about 8,000N of force to break a rib. with that knowledge, Hancock should have died about 22,500 times over. However, he is a super-hero so he's goodie.
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