The Physics of — Looney Tunes
Cartoons have always been seen as enemies when studying, especially for children. Colors, movements, sounds, explosions… attract the attention of everyone of any age group like a piece of metal by a magnet, and will certainly take away anyone’s concentration away.
However, it is possible to learn science and also encourage the assimilation of Physics and Mathematics content through cartoons, specifically Looney Tunes.
BoskoComicArtist — DeviantArt
When we talk about Looney Tunes, it’s impossible not to remember the plots of the tireless Wille E. Coyote in an attempt to capture the Road Runner.
In practically every episode between these characters there is some law of classical physics being challenged by the Road Runner that would make Isaac Newton’s hair stand on end (but leaves the audience quite satisfied): Huge stones rolling down the mountain, completely disregarding inertia, catapults that take time to be activated, ton weights being lifted disobeying the weight force, gravity being ignored, rocket propellants omitting momentum. The roadrunner’s relationship with the concepts of speed, acceleration and inertia is completely out of the ordinary.
But even if you’re a scientist or a science student, you like it more, it’s impossible not to laugh and feel entertained. Maybe Isaac Newton himself would laugh a lot watching some episodes of Looney Tunes…
All those ingenious traps designed by Coyote with pulleys, falsely placed stones loaded with potential energy just waiting for an opportunity to roll down and hit the fast blue bird, but he always fails… It could very well be miscalculations in Coyote’s hilarious engineering (perhaps a wrong sign in the calculations — who has never gotten a question like that wrong?) or the roadrunner that is too fast; Will he be as fast as light? These are questions that can lead to many discussions, speculations and calculations.
Of course, the events in the Roadrunner cartoon could never happen in the real world, but the poetic license of the show can be very well used as a fun stimulus in learning Physics. Curiosity is the main driver that always leads us to seek to learn more and the quest to learn more generates autonomy.
