Wapsi Square Forum

For those interested, I dug up some more papers that relate to the question of what would happen if Calista went into freefall rather than an ordinary human. I blame the recent end of my grad school education in applied mathematics.

1963 report by the FAA on human survivability of extreme impacts in freefall
This study collated data from medical reports about incidents of freefall from high places and determined that humans are capable of surviving falls from (83 meters/275 feet) with impact speeds as high as (39.3 meters per second/79 miles per hour). That's a little bit more than half the speed that a human body attains at terminal velocity.


Survival of high-velocity free-falls in water
This 1965 paper cites a study where experiments were performed on anesthetized guinea pigs in order make an empirical measurement of their terminal velocity. The outcome of this study gives the terminal velocity of a guinea pig as (37.1 meters per second/70.9 miles per hour). This conflicts with my earlier back-of-the-napkin estimate of 25 miles per hour, which makes sense because earlier this morning I found implicit assumptions in my previous calculations that a guinea pig has a surface area of approximately 1 square meter, which would be silly and increase the critter's wind resistance above realistic levels. This speed is approximately the same as the speed that Snyder's 1963 paper claims is the outer limit of the falling speed that a human can survive. That said, I would expect a guinea pig to be able to survive higher-speed impacts because its lower mass gives it less momentum. Unfortunately I can't directly access the 1955 guinea pig study because Elsevier has it behind a paywall even though it's federally-funded research in the public domain.

As for Calista's surface area, we can't rely on guinea pig measurements because they're basically furry lozenges. If we keep to the assumption that she's 0.73 kg and say her height is 17.2 cm (the average length of an adult female hand), we can calculate her surface area using the Du Bois formula as 494.4 square centimeters, which incidentally is about 82% of the size of a sheet of US-letter paper. Feeding that information into an updated version of my old calculations, together with a better estimate of her drag coefficient based on a study of the human body (0.6 instead of my earlier default guess of 0.1) leads me to believe that Cricket's real terminal velocity is probably closer to (22 meters per second / 50 miles per hour). That's within the range of survivable injury speeds even for normal-sized humans.

well its seems calista is a lot more robust that humans, she survived a severe stomping, that would crush a human of that size...
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/just-a-fairy/

also, I think maybe she has been shrunk as well as dietzel, otherwise that jumping spider is very large.. they are normally only 2CM long...
http://wapsisquare.com/comic/best-idea-ever/

illiad wrote:

Aleister Crow wrote:- or, they managed to find the right book to bring them back to real size, so Dietzel could be just sitting there , with calista hiding behind... :p

With Calista's luck it will be the spider that gets enlarged, just in time to freak-out Monica.

misterkrek wrote:While M deals with the Minotaur and his mom at the bottom, Calista's swinging crew should be dealing with the Master Chief...
(c'mon, someone had to point this out)

Nudge has quite a bit in common with 343 Guilty Spark, now that I think about it.

My2Cents wrote:With Calista's luck it will be the spider that gets enlarged, just in time to freak-out Monica.

REVENGE! Mhwa-ha-ha!

Grantwhy wrote:

Aed wrote:

jwhouk wrote:She's gone straight to PLAID!

Indeed - Ludicrous Speed!

my first thought as well.

I suspect people under a certain age would think 'super saiyan' instead of 'gone plaid'?

So, what's the correct protocol for requesting someone to fan-art this page with actual plaid?

I'm feel'n pretty old because while I can interpretate the second one from some super-dude that would be Nippon oriented and have a green semi-reptilian looking co-star, I have no reference to tie 'plaid' to whatsoever.

What the frack does being Scottish have to do with being super-fast?

TazManiac wrote: I'm feel'n pretty old because while I can interpretate the second one from some super-dude that would be Nippon oriented and have a green semi-reptilian looking co-star, I have no reference to tie 'plaid' to whatsoever.

What the frack does being Scottish have to do with being super-fast?

Do a quick search on your favorite search engine for "Space Balls". After watching the linked clip or perhaps the entire movie, if you are still wondering about ludicrous speed and being Scottish, then please pose the question to Mel Brooks.

Oh.

Sorry dude, unlikely to happen.

i cant seem to bring myself to endure Space Balls, most of John Candy's canon or anything like Dumb and Dumber. < shudder >




And I'm a real self-tought cinephile, just not everything ever made...

(and since spell check would have it that way, I'm leaving it...)

And I love Mel Brooks...

TazManiac wrote:Oh.

Sorry dude, unlikely to happen.

i cant seem to bring myself to endure Space Balls, most of John Candy's canon or anything like Dumb and Dumber. < shudder >

I'll thank you for not lumping Dumb & Dumber with the work of John Candy. The two are not comparable.

As for rejecting SpaceBalls....I'll just think of that as like being a vegetarian: I'm sure there are very good reasons for it, but I'd rather not deprive myself of something wonderful.

Spaceballs is like the rest of his movies, so bad they are good. Just dont even talk down Young Frankenstein or our seconds will be discussing our meeting in the morning, lol. Dumb and Dumber, thats like a lot of the other "funny movies" did now days. I am just missing the humor part.

oldmanmickey wrote:Dumb and Dumber, thats like a lot of the other "funny movies" did now days. I am just missing the humor part.

No, those films have lowered the bar. They are just missing the humor part.

I just realized that Pablo may have snuck a pun by us, in the title and subject of this strip.

"Lands on her feet". Grooves on the floor. And Monica was moving about as fast as a rifle bullet.

Could just be coincidence, or could be that he owes the Pun Jar an extra ration of subtle!

AmriloJim wrote:

oldmanmickey wrote:Dumb and Dumber, thats like a lot of the other "funny movies" did now days. I am just missing the humor part.

No, those films have lowered the bar. They are just missing the humor part.

and some people get it, and some just dont... one of my friends cannot stop laughing at Monty python, another just does not see WHY its funny... :shrug:
for ME,"Dumb and Dumber" is funny in parts, but you have to know Jim Carey's style.. it can vary from 'laid back' to just weird..

another friend did not watch it for years, due to 'bad reviews' 10 years later he did.. said it was great!

I prefer Spaceballs, its a lot more direct and crazy...

so guys, dont worry, its just what you grew up with... a lot of god humor needs knowledge...

Humor varies by upbringing and socialization.

The Three Stooges
Monty Python
Woody Allen
The Simpsons

Four very different approaches, and all funny as can be if you can follow the context.

BTW - The Box Trolls is superb! If you liked Coraline and Para-Norman, this is a must-see. Humor touches all 4 aspects above.

illiad wrote:also, I think maybe she has been shrunk as well as dietzel, otherwise that jumping spider is very large.. they are normally only 2CM long...

It's hard to compare proportions in a drawn comic strip rather than in actual photos, what with the proportions of things varying from panel to panel depending on how the artist drew them. But it looks as though the spider's body length is roughly the same as the height of Calista's head. It's been stated that Calista is five inches tall. Assuming a normal humanoid body plan where the head is about one-eighth the total body height, then that would make the spider somewhere around two-thirds of an inch long.

Just last weekend I found a jumping spider hiding out in my car from the snow, and its body was around three-quarters of an inch long. So this library spider would be large, but well within the natural limits of a normal Earthly spider.

Whether this critter actually is a normal Earthly spider, though. . .

thanks, catawampus..

It looks like dietzel is a small bull terrier then, they are normally about 45 cm (1.5 feet)tall..
the top of Calista's head reaches his neckline, so he must be only 8 or 9 inches tall!
so now dietzel seems about 3 inches, about right for the large spider... cant wait for monday!!

About Monicas's Three Point Landing.
It's somewhere between a meme and a trope.

Go to YouTube and search for...

Space Stallions

And

Three Point Landing Compilation.

Now this, I like...






Now that, I respect the art, the effort, the craft. Not my cup of tea though...

Don't go slapping me with no gloves and what-not...

not a problem good sir. We dont all have to like the same stuff. would be a boring world if we did.