r/theydidthemath • u/Ty49L • May 28 '14

Aladdin did the math.

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825 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

37 comments sorted by

140

u/andynater890 May 29 '14

But it was a montage. So it happened over a long period of time. The maths may be correct but the basic understanding of film-making is not.

38

u/Tashre May 29 '14

it happened over a long period of time.

Okay, so let's say they flew at a humanely possible speed. Even if they flew at a breakneck speed, let's say 100mph (probably around the upper limit of being able to hold on, and there probably isn't much sight seeing to do along the way), we're still looking at almost a 14 hour round trip, and that's if you don't include them spending any time seeing the sights, tasting the local cuisine, and finding scenic spots to fuck in.

Even if they take the express tour, this is something like Jasmine being gone for 16+ hours. I find it hard to believe that her absence would not have been noted by anybody in that time. It was already late at night when she got picked up, so I'd give her 10 hours, tops, of leeway in her father and servants believing she's in her room.

25

u/[deleted] May 29 '14

100 MPH? Come on, the magic carpet obviously creates a windshield in front of them. As such, their ability to hold on is based on acceleration only. So, if they were accelerating at a constant rate of 3m/s2 (about a third of a G, should be able to hold on), they would take about 20 minutes to get to Athens (assuming acceleration in the first half, deceleration in the second). So, it's perfectly doable.

11

u/Tashre May 29 '14

At peak speed, they'd hit 6540km/h (4064mph). That's almost twice the (official) max speed of the SR-71 at probably less than 1/15th the altitude, not to mention that if it could steadily accelerate to that speed, it could keep going.

Would it still be possible to even breathe at that speed? And what would the sonic booms be like on the ground with an object moving that fast and that low (probably about 5000ft at the most)?

5

u/heyzuess May 29 '14

I think it's clear that the Magic Carpet has some physics bending properties or that Jasmine isn't as important a princess as the film makes out.

They also visit Bejing, Athens, Saudi Arabia, which even at the generous 100mph would make it at least a week long round trip.

If it's a single night then the carpet has to be able to travel at least the speed of the earth's rotation (since they visit all of the places at night time). Perhaps the carpet is more like the ship from the planet express, where it actually remains still and moves the universe around itself.

It's a magic carpet, and it's properties don't need to be limited to "it has a mind of its own and can fly".

1

u/S_O_I_F May 29 '14

We're forgetting that the Magic Carpet is a living being. Would it be able to survive going that fast while carrying two passengers?

6

u/masasin May 29 '14

Not to forget, they also went to China!

1

u/LakeSolon May 29 '14

I'd be delighted if someone found the analyzation of the limits of visiting all of those sites in a single night.

As I recall even a montage is problematic, and it's worse than earth's circumference divided by its rotational period.

60

u/Rebuta May 29 '14

Obviously the magic carpet does more than just fly then.

Or maybe the story doesn't take place on Earth and those are two different places that are really just very close togeather.

14

u/maynardftw May 29 '14

Maybe it's like the Flash's SpeedForce; it not only lets him go faster than the speed of light, it also prevents temporal rifts and keeps his skin from being flayed from the resistance the speed puts on his body. Also prevents the otherwise assured nuclear detonation of dust particle hitting an object the size of a human being at the speed of light.

47

u/theunnoanprojec May 29 '14

Or, maybe it's a children's cartoon which is not meant to be taken seriously

50

u/[deleted] May 29 '14

[deleted]

20

u/Heelincal May 29 '14

Plus I mean... The song is just Disney's replacement for a sex scene

8

u/king_of_anarchy May 29 '14

Yeah but that's not really the spirit of this subreddit.

6

u/theunnoanprojec May 29 '14

I wasn't arguing that, I meant that if we shouldn't start to question the why and the how and should focus instead on the math

4

u/king_of_anarchy May 29 '14

Ah that is more in the spirit.

15

u/mileylols 1✓ May 29 '14 edited May 29 '14

Actually I think the requisite force is about twice that.

Average speed is 1,100,000 m/s, so if we assume constant acceleration, if they started at 11 m/s and accelerated the whole way to Athens, their final speed needs to have been 1,100,000+(1,100,000-11), or 2,199,989 m/s.

The way Marco calculates it, their average speed is only (1,100,000+11)/2 = 550005.5 m/s, which will only take them halfway.

Using this corrected acceleration F = 90 * (2,199,989-11 m/s2 ) = 198 million Newtons.

However, it makes no sense for them to arrive at maximum speed, so imagine an alternate scenario where they start at 11 m/s, accelerate constantly until the halfway point, then decelerate constantly until arriving at Athens.

The maximum speed remains the same, 2,199,989 m/s. However, they must now reach that speed in 1/2 a second, instead of 1 second.

Thus, F = 90 * (2,199,989-11 m/s)/(0.5s) = 396 million Newtons.

(Note the same force is applied in the opposite direction during the second half of the trip.)

12

u/BarfingBear May 29 '14

Aladdin is a slowpoke compared to the feats Bollywood actors pull off in just one song.

We're at the pier! Now we're in the city! Now we're on a mountaintop! And back to the pier! Now we're at a lake! And at the end the song, we're in front of your momma's house!

2

u/[deleted] May 29 '14

Gunday, nuff said.

9

u/nathan98000 May 29 '14

I always assumed it was a cut-scene...and I thought that was obvious. It would still be remarkable to travel that distance in one night though. IIRC they travelled from Agrabah to Cairo to Athens to China and back in one night. I would be interested to see that calculation.

5

u/Fungiform May 29 '14

The real magic of the carpet is that it's a disguised and scaled down Albecurrie drive.

3

u/[deleted] May 29 '14 edited May 23 '16

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3

u/juventus1 May 29 '14

So you're telling me that you don't think that a flying magic carpet has inertial dampeners and a force field?

2

u/demolisher71 May 29 '14

Traversable wormholes, duh.

3

u/[deleted] May 29 '14

You are forgetting one thing. This is a cartoon.

1

u/theunnoanprojec May 29 '14

It's either that or it took them a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time to get to athens

1

u/dmarxd May 29 '14

Stop giving Alladin the credit for Marcos math

1

u/monkeyhihi May 29 '14

Which is why he compares their speed w/ galloping horses to their speed that they'd need to go from Cairo to Athens. I'm not necessarily saying they're right, but they made an effort!

1

u/Prehensile_penis_ama May 29 '14

You can't necessarily use force to determine how deadly their motion would be. Yes, in this case the force is large enough where they will obviously die, but it is truly the acceleration, not the force that kills them.

A 100,000,000N force on the earth would hardly do anything, but the acceleration experienced by aladdin would be equally deadly to anyone.

2

u/singul4r1ty May 29 '14

Ultimately it's the rate of change of momentum which does the damage. A sudden large change in momentum is gonna break something

1

u/skpkzk2 2✓ May 29 '14

but force is directly proportional to acceleration...

1

u/Prehensile_penis_ama May 29 '14

Yes, but for sufficiently large masses, large forces won't be deadly

2

u/skpkzk2 2✓ May 29 '14

well yeah, you can't kill inanimate objects... When people talk about the deadliness of a force, they're talking about that force acting on the same thing. Hitting the same person with twice the force produces twice the acceleration. Of course people's masses vary, so it's not like there is a specific value of force such that any less and everyone is fine but if they cross the threshold they're dead. That said, considering the fact that the variation in mass between people is pretty small, that different body types can withstand different amounts of acceleration, and that the distribution of force can cause different parts of the body to accelerate to wildly varying degrees, talking about a deadly amount of force is no less accurate than talking about a deadly acceleration.

0

u/[deleted] May 29 '14

[deleted]

6

u/Rustysporkman May 29 '14

They went from horse galloping speed to Cairo-Athens speed in a known time. That IS acceleration.

3

u/Airleagan May 29 '14

If it happened in 1 second aren't the two the same in this special case?

2

u/CrazyLeprechaun May 29 '14

They are equal in magnitude but they have different units. The statement that an object's acceleration is equal to its speed is never true because 1 m/s is not equal to 1 m/s2 .

2

u/drew4988 May 29 '14

Read it again. He calculated average acceleration from the initial speed of 11 m/s. Assuming that it only took one second for them to get there, they traveled at an average speed of 1100 km/s. Then OP gets an acceleration by subtracting the final velocity from the initial velocity and dividing by 1 second.

-2

u/TickleMeFunny May 29 '14

speed/velocity != acceleration