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Alex Hammond
Mr. Hill
Physics P6
March 26, 2015
Physics Writing Project
The cartoon world is not a direct reflection of our physical world. It follows a
different set of laws in regards to what is and what is not possible. In the cartoon episode
Bugs Bunny Episode 105, Water, Water Every Hare we see examples of these unique
laws. While watching this clip and looking for inconsistencies between the virtual and
physical world, I came across three main laws broken; the buoyancy law, conservation of
mass, and the law of gravity.

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Before watching this episode, I was not familiar with buoyancy. I could tell by
watching the episode that Bugs Bunny was supposed to float but I could not put a law or
formula to it. In the episode, Bugs possessions are floating but he is not.
He bobs up a couple of times but primarily stays in his bed,
underwater. After about a minute of the rabbit carrying on as he

usually does, he

and the mattress finally float. I knew that this was not what was supposed to happen.
After some

research, I found the Archimedes Principle that stated, Any

object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up

by a

force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the

object. If we assume that the displaced water is equal to his

mass, then he should float. If this were a real situation, given the amount of water in his
room, Bugs Bunny and his mattress would not be solidly sitting on the ground. They
would at least be bobbing around the room.

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The conservation of mass means that mass cannot be created nor destroyed. This
is a principle that is disregarded in this episode. The first instance of this is when bugs
makes a table and food appear out of nowhere. There was no table lying around and in
the next few seconds it disappears again. If the episode were following the
conservation of mass, the viewer would have known where the table
was before and after Bugs brought it out. The second time this principle is tested is when
Bugs uses the Reducing oil on the monster. If mass cannot be created nor
destroyed, the monster should not have shrunk. It no longer had the mass it
once had and there was no explanation as to where that mass had gone. In a
real-life situation, an object would not be able to shrink without the object losing a part of
itself.
The last law that was broken was the law of gravity. Up until they broke the
Ether bottle, gravity had worked, as it should. This broken bottle caused the world to
move

in slow motion and for gravity to not pull as hard or fast as

before. The viewer can see the characters almost floating as they
jump from the staircase. In reality, there is no substance or gas

that can

affect gravity. They would have fallen as fast as before. The only

explanation for this in the physical world is if the characters suddenly became very airresistant. Under normal circumstances though, this would prove impossible.
Cartoons were always exciting and realistic as a child. With the knowledge I have
gained from Physics, my outlook on the actions of the characters has changed. The
cartoon world is full of faulty physics. In Bugs Bunny Episode 105, Water, Water in Hare

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we can see the law of buoyancy, conservation of mass, and the law of gravity be ignored.
Knowing that these laws are not being followed does make the cartoon a little more
unrealistic but it does nothing to diminish its entertainment purpose. Even though the
physics isnt always right, the cartoons will forever be fun.