Road Runner

The Physics of Road Runner

The classic Warmer Brothers cartoon featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner involved the repeated attempts by the hapless Coyote to capture a Road Runner bird, involving a range of increasingly outlandish contraptions, that without fail, backfired spectacularly.  Wile E. Coyote frequently attempted to use rockfalls in various guises as a device to ensnare the Road Runner.  I came across two notable examples on YouTube:

1. The Rolling Boulder

Pushing a rolling boulder down a slope to catch the fast-moving Road Runner is a challenge of timing:

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Wile E. Coyote clearly underestimated the long runout effect of some large landslides, such as rock avalanches.  Mind you, the friction coefficient of this boulder would be a challenge for even the most seasoned landslide specialist.

2. The rockfall

In this case Wile E. Coyote tries to catch the Road Runner with a classic rock topple, with a nicely placed keystone:

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Even though Wile E. Coyote has modeled the system, he demonstrated here that predicting the likely behaviour of any rockfall is difficult, especially when the blocks are irregular in shape!

I am very glad I don’t have to try to understand and forecast landslide behaviour in cartoon land!