THE LAWS OF CARTOON PHYSICS
By Trevor Paquette and Lt. Justin D. Baldwin
Cartoon Law I: Any body suspended in space will remain 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 32 feet per second per second takes over.
Cartoon Law II: Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid
matter intervenes suddenly.
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 of motion the stooge's surcease.
Cartoon Law III: Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
conforming to its perimeter.
Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of
victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are 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.
Cartoon Law IV: The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is
greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge
to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken. Such an object
is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably unsuccessful.
Cartoon Law V: 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 earth's 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. The feet of a character who
is running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the ground,
especially when in flight.
Cartoon Law VI: 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 the cloud of altercation at several places
simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or
being throttled. A 'wacky' character has the option of self-replication only at
manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.
Cartoon Law VII: Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to
resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot.
This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generation, 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 of science.
Cartoon Law VIII: Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might
comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated,
spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of
blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify.
Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container.
Cartoon Law IX: For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the
physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it
happen to a duck instead.
These pages copyright Karen Kopriva 2002;
all rights are reserved