Rolling the Black Pearl Over: Analyzing the Physics of a Movie Clip

Abstract

In the third movie (“At World's End”) in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Jack Sparrow and his crew need to roll their ship (the Black Pearl) over in order to bring it back to the living world during a green flash at sunset. They do so by running back and forth from one side railing to the other on the top deck. In addition, Captain Barbossa orders that 18 cannons and a pile of barrels on the lower deck be cut loose to add mass to the running crew. In the movie they overturned the ship, but would they succeed under the same circumstances on a real galleon? In this paper, a numerical analysis using simple approximations is developed that suggests that what occurs in the movie is in fact realistic. Analyzing a popular film clip in this manner is a good way to arouse student interest, to teach about physics and numerical methods, and to model scientific reasoning when a situation is not as neatly defined as in a typical textbook problem.

Potential loading damage to industrial storage tanks due to volcanic ash fallout

“…The study of the problem of floating bodies and their stability has a history dating back to the work of Archimedes. The fundamental physics continues to receive attention (Kliava and Me ´gel 2010; Me ´gel and Kliava 2010), and the topic also has educational value (Mungan and Emery 2011).…”