Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Super Mario Gravity
Thanks to the kindly folks at Slate it is now my pleasure to report the most creative use of an 8-bit video game system since someone invented the emulator. Apparently a high school physics class took it upon itself to measure the gravitational acceleration felt by players in the various Super Mario Bros. games. Through the use of Quicktime's frames-per-second function and a variety of gaming consoles ranging from the NES to the Wii, this study confirms that gravity in the Mushroom Kingdom has varied between 4.4 and 11 times as strong as that found here on Earth, a fact which explains why it was so tricky to pull that reach the top of that flagpole before entering the castle but NOT how Princess Toadstool was able to hover in midair for a full 2 seconds before reaching the ground. (Although it should be noted that Super Mario Brothers 2 does not take place in the Mushroom Kingdom, but rather in some sort of dream land imported from Japan.)
In any case, this is an impressive piece of research, not just for the avenues it opens into other video game related physics problems (Do the birds shot in Duck Hunt fall in a realistic manner when shot? How much angular momentum does Link have when he does a spin attack in the Legend of Zelda series? How strong must the bionic arm used by the title character in Bionic Commando be to launch him from ledge to ledge?) but also for confirming the educational potential of video game systems of all stripes.
Someone should nominate this class for the Ig Nobel Prize.
Thanks to the kindly folks at Slate it is now my pleasure to report the most creative use of an 8-bit video game system since someone invented the emulator. Apparently a high school physics class took it upon itself to measure the gravitational acceleration felt by players in the various Super Mario Bros. games. Through the use of Quicktime's frames-per-second function and a variety of gaming consoles ranging from the NES to the Wii, this study confirms that gravity in the Mushroom Kingdom has varied between 4.4 and 11 times as strong as that found here on Earth, a fact which explains why it was so tricky to pull that reach the top of that flagpole before entering the castle but NOT how Princess Toadstool was able to hover in midair for a full 2 seconds before reaching the ground. (Although it should be noted that Super Mario Brothers 2 does not take place in the Mushroom Kingdom, but rather in some sort of dream land imported from Japan.)
In any case, this is an impressive piece of research, not just for the avenues it opens into other video game related physics problems (Do the birds shot in Duck Hunt fall in a realistic manner when shot? How much angular momentum does Link have when he does a spin attack in the Legend of Zelda series? How strong must the bionic arm used by the title character in Bionic Commando be to launch him from ledge to ledge?) but also for confirming the educational potential of video game systems of all stripes.
Someone should nominate this class for the Ig Nobel Prize.
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