Ohayou,
On Sun, 29 Jun 1997, Richard Lawson wrote:
: Gary Kleppe wrote:
: >
: > On Fri, 27 Jun 1997 00:21:07 -0500, Richard Lawson wrote:
: >
: > >She could do a lot of things, but defying the laws of
: > >physics was not among them.
:
: > Ranma should have paid better attention in science class.
: > What he did in this scene isn't against the laws of physics.
:
: Sure it is. Never mind about swimming against the force of water; she's
: still subject to the force of gravity. Look at it this way: could
: Ranma move her arms and legs fast enough through the air to lift herself
: off the ground? A bird she ain't. Taking the force of the fire hose
: pushing her towards the ground, and adding that to the force of gravity,
: would make it impossible for Ranma to stay aloft.
Richard, Gary is right. There is no law of physics that prevents
Ranma form swimming up the stream - it's merely the contraints of
the human body that make it impossible.
Furthermore, you cannot add the force with wich the firehose
ejects the water. If I remember the scene right, Ranma is up in
the air, when the water hits him, so Akane has angled the stream
upwards. The force of ejection is what carries the water *up* -
by the time it begins to fall, all that energy (or rather the
vertical component of it) has been negated by the pull of gravity;
it does not go into the equation. The gravity pulls on Ranma and
the water alike, thus does not change anything.
To re-iterate: This is not against the laws of physics - it's
just more than a human body can reasonably be expected to do. The
only impossibility in this scene is that Ranma would have to be
able to swim faster than the water falls. Actually, I am not
considering that the water is in free fall - this might impair
it's quality as a swimming medium, but failing that, it's
perfectly possible to swim up a vertical stream: Just not
*humanly* possible. :)
Sebastian