Re: Sonic's Speed

From: Matt Penna <mpenna_at_vivanet.com>
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 1996 22:41:35 -0400

At 09:05 PM 4/8/96 -0400, you wrote:
>All this talk about Sonic's speed has reminded me of a couple questions
>I've been meaning to ask. In the Saturday AM show, the other Freedom
>Fighters often grabbed hold of him and rode behind him as he juiced. How
>did they ever hold onto him while he was moving that fast? Also, wouldn't
>whoever was directly behind Sonic get impaled on his quills when he stopped
>suddenly? (Ewww! That could be nasty!)

Well, I suppose if you look at it from the "Cartoon Physics" point of view,
none of this matters. There was a good example of this in that "The Real
Ghostbusters" cartoon series almost 10 years ago. They were all transported
to a cartoon world, and Egon, logical as ever, couldn't adjust. "Egon! Help
me move this lake!" "You cannot pick up a lake and move it! It's illogical!"
It was pretty weird, but it was funny.

But, if you look at it from the real world physics point of view, yeah. When
Sonic stops, he would have quite a mess to peel off of his back. Holding
onto something that's going faster than mach 1 (Mach 1 is the speed of
sound) wouldn't be possible (Obviously).

I have to go in for the cartoon explanation. The force of friction from the
air alone would be enormous. Unless there were some kind of genetic mutation
that protected Sonic from affects like that. This hasn't really been
explained, yet.

A note to all of you trying to figure out the Physics of it: Using The U.S.
system of measurements rarely works. Most of the laws of physics were
defined using the metric system. Use meters, not miles.

-Matt


Received on Mon Apr 08 1996 - 23:24:54 PDT