5 Ways Physics Will Fail You Every Time

Read all the back issues of Scientific American you want. The deck is stacked against you where these phenomena are concerned. And it always will be.

1 Flight

We all pretty much learned before the age of seven: a bed sheet is just a bed sheet – and jumping off the patio roof with one tucked into your collar won’t land you anywhere but flat on your back, probably with gravel embedded in your skin. Unless you’re strapped to a hang glider or wrapped in a Boeing, you’re never going to have this one under your control.
If you just can’t quell your jonesing to skim, soar or levitate, RC helicopters are a fun way to feel like you have at least some control of the air currents. What the hell – go ahead and wear the sheet while you fly it.

While you're at it, pretend it's Blue Thunder

2 Gravity

This one goes hand-in-hand with flight…only with gravity, you don’t have to be so far off the ground to be disappointed by it. But you probably will. And the variety of vehicles and faulty plywood constructions through which you can experience its superiority is practically limitless. BMX bikes and rollerblades? But of course. Skateboards and street skis? Hell yes, dude. Homemade jet-powered office chairs equipped with model rocket engines and outboard motors for wicked sweet fumeage and visual impact? Affirmative, cap’n! Just because tempting Einstein’s theories sounds like a straight line to a stretcher board and a year in physical therapy doesn’t mean it’s not fun to watch others try it. Maybe go with this instead.

Hot Wheels are kind of physics

3 Fire 

The only entities that have ever benefited from dudes playing with fire are the all-you-can-eat dinner theater that Siegfried and Roy perform in, and the company that manufactured aerosol hair spray in the 80’s. This is because the list of things that won’t melt or burn when they encounter an open flame is limited to Ouija boards, Bibles and urban myths about Ouija boards and Bibles not melting or burning. Still, if you need to get it out of your system, make yourself useful. Grill something.

And then go even hotter

4 Collisions

Remember that one time you and your best friend ran headlong into each other from across the playground just so you could see what maximum impact would feel like? No…you probably don’t. Because where you find collisions, you almost always find concussions. Best to keep the impact injuries to a minimum, if only to avoid losing your remaining memories of third grade. Should you really, really need to see things crash into each other, here’s something that might make you happy. No helmet required.

(Beret not included)

5 Belly Fat

This one is a cheat – it’s actually physics plus chemistry. Still, it has the upper hand. And you may have been persuaded by those taut-and-toned energy addicts from infomercial-America that all you have to do is break your ass to lose your gut. But it’s gonna be an uphill battle…and the other four on the list pretty much rule out using other fun yet unfeasible physical phenomena to give it the old college try. For anyone intent on fighting the good fight regardless, maybe start with this (if it’s a bust, you can always work your way to “satisfied with being a little guttish”…physics is totally on your side with that one.)

Yeah, right.

-dwhluna