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The Laws of Physics in an Animated Universe: Chicken Little

The Physics of the animal world stand on two legs: Chicken Little

Chicken Little was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2005. The story focuses on Chicken Little who is small courage character lives in a small town of Oakey Oaks. It starts with a chaos event of “the sky is falling”. No one believes in Chicken Little even his father, and it brings a big shame on him and his father. Thus, he tries to earn back credit for his family by entering baseball club and tournament, and hope to succeed like his father. Fortunately, he is mostly miss the ball, but gets a big hit at the end of the last game which makes him the hero of the town. At that night, a piece of “sky” falls on him again, and this time he has it with him. He calls his friends to come over and figure it out, but not his father because Chicken Little afraid the father will not believe him either way. The group find out that it is the piece of device belong to alien’s ship. The aliens appear to be invaders, so Chicken Little, his friends ring the bell to warn the town. However, the alien ran off, but left a lost child back. Thus, the town doesn’t get on time, and once again the town doesn’t believe him include his father. Next morning, a group of aliens’ ships attack and look for the child. His father realized that he needs to trust his son. Finally, Chicken Little, his friends and his father brings back the child to the parents and solve the misunderstanding. When this movie was made, it tells the story about the trust between father and son plus some amusing scene. Although it is the world of animal standing on two legs, there are some physical laws that are not realistic. The path of action in some scenes is not follow inertia law. An object moves as if there is another force enforces on it, but there is none. In addition, the law of physic in the movie is not unique, they contradict each other. In this essay, I will analyze the laws of physic and provide examples from different scenes.

There are many animations that have animals’ characters. In order to simplify the actions of the characters and makes it easier for the audience to believe, these characters was designed their physical form similar to human being.

The first law of physics to analyze is the Newton’s first law of motion – the law of inertia. This law states that every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. Thus, an object should change the movement when there is force applied to it. At very beginning of the movie, a giant ball water metal tank is rolling consistent on the road without slowing down. Even if the ball is heavy which have a lot of momentum, the object doesn’t slowing down although it appears many forces act again it. The animators make the ball digs up the road while rolling in order to create an image for audience that the ball is really heavy. However, the animators don’t think it is an obstacle which should slow the ball down significantly. The animators want to emphasize the ball is extremely heavy which destroy everything on its’ way. The ball even breaks a brick wall, it still not slowing down. It was made too exaggerated compare to the real life. In real life, even the ball does not stop rolling, the velocity of if should reduce significantly within the time of rolling, destroying the road and hitting the wall.

The Animators succeed create an image there is a significant huge force on the rolling ball by the heavy ball pushes up the road in front of it just like a ship push water to the side. However, audience will be able to realize that the action does not follow the law of physic if the scene is longer. In reality, an object like a ship pushes water, or an arrow push the air, it can be done easily because the matter of water and air can be separate easily, and the objects have narrow heads to cut off the bond, and it still create friction. In reality, a heavy rolling ball is able to crush the ground below it, but it cannot dig up a road ahead of it before it even touches.

Another example of the movie which does not follow the path of action is in the dodge ball scene. The direction of the balls changes significantly after it hits a flat wall wrongly. First the balls fly horizontal, hit the wall and change the angle which is about 45 degree, and again it hits the flat ceiling with a direction straight down. If a movement follows the physic law, the force act on the ball should be opposite direction when it hit the flat wall, so the ball should bound back at horizontal direction (It could be a bit off because the angle may not be 90 degree). It could happen only if the ball spinning which it is not in the movie. One good example in real life is racquetball. The animators could make it more realistic by letting the balls hit an edge of a tool and bound back instead of a flat wall.

The law of physic is not consistent on the film. On the staring scene, the rolling ball crushes any object on it way, but later it rolls up and bend a big sturdy tree, which will be break in the real world. The tree even acts as lever for the ball to fly up. Another inconsistent scene is in the beginning scene, when the giant ball fall off the tower, it bounds just little and rolls. On the other hand, after using the big tree as lever to takeoff, the ball bounds at least four times to a complete stop. The stop was made suddenly after destroy the mayor statute; in order to show the audience how terrified the cause of Chicken Little’s act. Although the audience may not realize it because it’s fun, the stop does not consistent with the beginning of the film, nor follow physic laws. The most realistic in the ball scene is bouncing a bit after falling of the tower because the metal ball isn’t elastic to bounce back as high as before although it should be broken when it hits the ground because of pressure of water. When making this scene, animators only focused on the funny part to attract audience, but did not consider careful about law of physic to make it more realistic.

I will discuss net force act on an object in this paragraph. In the scene that Chicken Little misses the school bus and runs to school. While rushing to school and crossing a street, he steps on chewing gum. The force of glue chewing gum sticks to him, and he is unable to take it off by his strength. He put a candy into his mouth to create glue which he sticks it on a running car in order to use car force helps him out of the gum. It is obvious that the mixture glue created by candy and water cannot carry a small kid. Even if the glue is able to carry Chicken Little because he’s so light, his arm will be broken due to a large force pulling him by looking at how high he reach after getting rid of the gum. A force comes from moving car acting on stand still kid is big enough to injury Chicken Little. Imaging what will happen to an adult standing on the street and catch a rear mirror of a running car. The force get hit in front of the car are equal to be dragged from behind the car. Thus in reality, this is the end of the story for Chicken Little.
Here is another type of mixture glue combination between his comb and water. Chicken Little use water in his mouth to wet his comb. Then use his comb to stick to a surface of a roof to help him climb up to the top while carrying the little alien kid. I never try it on real chicken’s comb to see if it can stick or not. Although the chicken comb might be sticky, it won’t be able to sustain the weight of Chicken Little. In addition to support my hypothesis, Chicken Little carries extra weight while climbing up.

Weak structure carries a much heavier object. Fish builds a tower by regular note book paper – outside wall only, and has no supporting frame. However, Fish somehow stands at the top of the tower which 3 times higher than him and plays King Kong star on top of the paper tower. He shifts it to one side, and jumps. His action applies a force on tower paper which can’t sustain that much force. This scene is totally unrealistic. Only the weight of Fish’s helmet is heavy enough to crush the paper tower. Thus, there is no way that the tower can sustain the weight of Fish.

This paragraph talks about gravity in the animation and the scenes are contradict each other  when Chicken Little use bottle soda as a rocket. For this analysis, let’s agree on the force of full bottle of soda is strong enough to carry Chicken Little more than ten feet height in the first time he uses it. The first time he uses the soda to break into school and he lands before the bottle because he has more mass than the empty bottle. This scene seems real because the empty bottle may have reached its terminal velocity. However, the second time he uses half bottle of soda to reach the school bell in order to warn the village about aliens. Only half of soda is used, but it is able to carry him much higher than the first time. It is definitely opposite with the law of physic – the bigger force, the longer distance. Thus, using half of the rocket soda, he should not able to reach the height three times more than the height of first time. Instead following the physic laws, the animators let the Chicken Little fly about three times higher with half of the force. It doesn’t look real, but it creates a feeling for audience that the main character is trying really hard this time in order to save his friends and warns the villagers. Thus, his determination gives him more power, the power even transfer to the bottle of soda. Similarly, the ending is a movie about a star chicken floats in midair with two sodas for a while then increasing speed up. According to inertia if he floats midair and no force is applied on him he should to remain floating.

After examining the laws of physics in Chicken Little, it is clear that the movie pay attention to laws of physic. Because of the exaggeration, audiences feel relief from the stress of the real world, so they can easily relax and enjoy the movie. Thus, the animators successful deliver the fun movie’s context of the bond between father and son.