Math In The Movies ‐ Furious 7 Worksheet

The Scenario

Furious 7 is the 7th movie in the highly successful car‐based Fast and the Furious movie series, and also the last film that Paul Walker did. There are lots of high octane action scenes stacked full of mathematical content. In one of the most memorable scenes in Abu Dhabi, Dom (Vin Diesel) drives a high end sports car through the window of a skyscraper and manages to jump the car into the adjacent skyscraper. Now, this is obviously a pretty crazy stunt. But is it even remotely possible? We can analyze some of the basic math behind the jump. There are actually two jumps – we’ll just say they’re approximately the same and analyze only one of them.

Question 1 (2 mark)

The gap between the two buildings is 70 metres (approximately), the car drops 8 floors during the jump, and the height of single floor is 5 metres. Calculate how fast the car needs to be travelling horizontally at takeoff to cross that distance (answer in units of km/hr) Question 2 (3 marks) The car they’re travelling in is a Lykan HyperSport, a very high performance sports car. It has an acceleration capability of 0 to 100 km/hr in 3.4 seconds. Calculate the time it would take to accelerate to the required speed (from Question 1). Calculate how much of a run up is needed in the building to hit this speed before the jump. Question 3 (3 marks) If they trashed the first car, they might need a different car for the second jump. Let’s say the second gap between the two buildings is 90 metres, with a car drop of 7 floors during the jump, a floor height of 3 metres, and a car acceleration capability of 0 to 100 km/hr in 2.7 seconds. Calculate the time it would take to accelerate to the required speed from a standing start (in the movie the car has some initial velocity for the second jump).

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