MARIO PHYSICS: MEASURING MUSHROOM KINGDOM GRAVITY
This is what we like to see: something to rival Dan Bruno’s Mother 3 musical malarkey and Kevin R. Grazier, Ph.D.’s fantastic 2007 Halo Science 101 (key finding: “For a Halo with a radius of 5,000 kilometers to simulate one Earth gravity, it would have to spin with a tangential speed of slightly over seven kilometers per second. That implies that the Halo would rotate once every hour and fifteen minutes, or 19 ¼ times a day.”) for sheer theoretical madness.
Brooklyn physics teacher Glenn Elert and students have meticulously measured Mario’s rate of descent in each game of the franchise from Super Mario Bros. to Super Paper Mario (the study having been done, presumably, before Super Mario Galaxy — or perhaps its distinct gravitational lunacy instantly set their computational units smoking).
Their conclusion:
Generally speaking, the gravity in each Mario game, as game hardware has increased, is getting closer to the true value of gravity on earth of 9.8 m/s2. However, gravity, even on the newest consoles, is still extreme. According to Wikipedia, a typical person can withstand 5 g before losing consciousness, and all but the very latest of Mario games have gravity greater than this. Also, with gravity that great, it is a wonder Mario can perform such feats as leaping almost 5 times his own body height!
Acceleration Due to Gravity: Super Mario Brothers
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