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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
X. Everything falls faster than an anvil.
Examples too numerous to mention from the Roadrunner
cartoons. |
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