{"id":15873,"date":"2015-08-23T05:30:32","date_gmt":"2015-08-23T05:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=15873"},"modified":"2015-08-22T17:08:34","modified_gmt":"2015-08-22T17:08:34","slug":"road-runner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/08\/23\/road-runner\/","title":{"rendered":"The rockfall physics of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_15875\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2015\/08\/15_08-road-runner-e1440262351781.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-15875\" class=\"size-full wp-image-15875\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2015\/08\/15_08-road-runner-e1440262351781.jpg\" alt=\"Road Runner\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-15875\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Road Runner<\/p><\/div>\n<h5>The Physics of Road Runner<\/h5>\n<p>The classic Warmer Brothers cartoon featuring <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wile_E._Coyote_and_The_Road_Runner\">Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner<\/a> 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.\u00a0 Wile E. Coyote frequently attempted to use rockfalls in various guises as a device to ensnare the Road Runner.\u00a0 I came across two notable examples on YouTube:<\/p>\n<h6>1. The Rolling Boulder<\/h6>\n<p>Pushing a rolling boulder down a slope to catch the fast-moving Road Runner is a challenge of timing:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FWFItM0-NX4\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>Wile E. Coyote clearly underestimated the long runout effect of some large landslides, such as <a href=\"http:\/\/dggs.alaska.gov\/sections\/engineering\/geohazards\/hazard-types.php?theme=rock-avalanche\">rock avalanches<\/a>.\u00a0 Mind you, the friction coefficient of this boulder would be a challenge for even the most seasoned landslide specialist.<\/p>\n<h6>2. The rockfall<\/h6>\n<p>In this case Wile E. Coyote tries to catch the Road Runner with a classic rock topple, with a nicely placed keystone:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Yq7wCqmBEbg\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>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!<\/p>\n<p>I am very glad I don&#8217;t have to try to understand and forecast landslide behaviour in cartoon land!<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wile E. Coyote often tried to catch the Road Runner using rockfalls. Unfortunately he failed to understand how hard it is to predict landslide behaviour, especially in cartoon land.<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":15875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[929],"tags":[932,469,56,540],"class_list":["post-15873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humour","tag-cartoon","tag-featured","tag-rockfall","tag-topple"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}