Angry Birds on a physics exam

This was pretty much destined to happen, eventually. The old Wile E. Coyote story problems were getting a bit stale.

Via Rishabh Agarwal

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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As a cautionary tale, our high school physics teacher would tell us the reason Wile E. Coyote lived alone in a cave in the desert was because he aced all his theory classes, but failed all his labs. “You’ve been warned.” (What a great guy — there were two ways to take his exams: you could attempt to get as many correct answers as possible and take your exam grade from the curve, or you could answer every question incorrectly and receive an A for the entire semester.)
Anonymous

But it’s not impossible. I used to bull’s-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home, and they’re not much bigger than two meters!
Anonymous

Yes like Atomizer said.

theta = 30.67 degrees
V0 = 25.58 m/s

Wow brought back memories from Physics 101!
Anonymous

Epic fail. The teacher. Awful pseudocontext.
He/she has a ~5m diameter angry bird and pig. That’s bigger than an elephant. Launched at like 50mph?
And yet, it’s wimpy little slingshot and rubber band that launches it?!?
This is how to do real physics with Angry Birds:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/physics-of-angry-birds/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/does-the-angry-blue-bird-multiply-its-mass/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/is-the-launch-speed-in-angry-birds-constant/
jacob_ewing

Reminds me of a great teacher I had for physics in high school, Robert Pickett. One of our tests used chickens in every question. I remember one with two chickens tethered by a rope, one of them hanging over the edge of a cliff with a frictionless pulley.
Dread Pirate Robert

My physics teacher used to ask questions about throwing rocks from the top of buildings, given initial velocity of so many meters per second, add gravitational acceleration, and ask how far the rocks would travel into little Billy’s head if his skull had a friction coefficient of whatever.

Always interesting, I miss Mr. Patterson.
DAN_III

I knew I’d find the answer here!
Nice problem BTW
Anonymous

the answer to the question is 31 degrees 9 minutes 17.52 seconds if acceleration due to gravity is taken as 10 m/s2 or 30 degrees 40 minutes 32.33 seconds if it is taken as 9.8 m/s2 :)
by the way, my students’ physics professor (myself, that is :P) has already clearly established his hatred towards the game so it will be a cold day in may before they can expect such a question in a paper I set… :P
pocket tanks on the other hand is a different issue… or questions on projectile motion based on trebuchets from AOE2 are more MY choice :P
Anonymous

< John_Cleese_burn_the_witch > sue them! sue them! sue them for copy-write IP violations [crossed-eyes] sue them!!
Atomizer

The answer should be 30.7Âº.
tyger11

I prefer Hunt the Wumpus or Scorched Earth, thanks.
Anonymous

now add a headwind…
pimlottc

Since when did Hunt the Wumpus involve parabolic trajectories?
Anonymous

WTF!!! YOU GET MORE THAN ONE SHOT!!!!!
ackpht

Atomizer is correct. The only quibble I have with the problem is that the student must assume the gravitational acceleration is 9.8 m/s**2 to get that answer, and it is not made explicit that this is taking place at the surface of the Earth.
querent

I once ran out of gas on my way back from lunch (yeah, we got to drive off campus for lunch when I was in High School). So I was late to AP physics. My teacher cracked up when I explained why I was late and sweaty when I got back (Mississippi…it was a hot walk).

Every test after that featured a question that started something like, “Say Will runs out of gas while traveling at .4C….”

Rick Gardner, wherever you are, thanks for recognizing that I was good at that stuff. Working on my PhD in mathematical biology, right now.
Anonymous

This is just silly. Everyone knows that you’d get more points for hitting the bit of wood under the pig.
Anonymous

ask ROVIO who sells and markets Angry Birdsdroppe
jer

The page is slanted but the text is not. Obvious fake?
- Anonymous
  
  the page isn’t slanted, there’s two pages held together with a stapler, and the corner with the staple is folded. if you hold a page like that and lift the top page up in the air to take a picture of the second page, that’s what it looks like -_____-
- Anonymous
  
  I don’t think so.. That slant could have been part of a photocopy.
- Anonymous
  
  Nope, that just a shadow from a photo copy machine where the prior pages are flipped over at the stabled corner.
- LegendofPedro
  
  Obvious photocopy.
- Anonymous
  
  no it’s not. that’s a top left stapled page that is folded back, it’s not attached at the bottom
- Anonymous
  
  The page isn’t slanted… it is a packet with the corner folded over.
- Anonymous
  
  No. That’s the page prior being held up. It’s stapled at the corner. Not everything is a conspiracy.
- Anonymous
  
  Not if its paper stapled in the top corner, then its folded at an angle and the text be straight.
Anonymous

My calculations show that angle is ~30.58Â°.
jer

I didn’t mean slanted as in the italics you would get from the workings of perspective, but the slight angle at which the page is shown (look at the top right corner) compared with the exactly straight text. Of course it is possible that the page wasn’t printed or photocopied straight onto the paper.
- LYNDON
  
  Yeah, ‘slanted page’ query referes to the top of the page as seen on the top right.
  
  FWIW I’d not it also doesn’t appear to be *straight*. Perhaps even a but of it angling up from the left.
  
  In photos where some of a page is bending and some not you often can’t tell because on the white paper there are not shading/depth cues. And then there can be lens distortion.
  
  The edges of of the angry birds pic slope in a little too. If you count that in as perspective the whole thing pretty much makes sense to me. So not an obvious fake over here.
  
  Anyway:
  
  As regard the question, as we taking into account the way a slingshot progressively transfers energy to the object? Where is the release point? Questions like this are hell on a certain kind of mind.
  
  Fortunately I wouldn’t know where to start.
  - jphilby
    
    @lyndon: The way solving problems like this is taught is to ignore complicated (real-world) questions like the (changing) acceleration of the (elastic) slingshot (assumed to be finished at the origin) and messy stuff like air friction (assume a vacuum). These birds would be in vacuum suits.
    
    The point is that you can get to reasonably in-the-ballpark accurate answers by making simplifying assumptions. Because, well, 100% correct answers are impossible.
Zadaz

My physics teacher was a bowler, so every physics problem had to do with bowling. So I would have jumped at a question like this.

Except I would have pointed out that the red bird can’t hit the green pig because the whole thing is black and white, and then lost 7 points.
Palefire

I don’t think the page is slanted. I think the pages were staple together and what you see in the top left corner is the previous page pulled back.

My question is, do you get to post multiple answers based on the number of birds you have? Could be the first multiple answer question.
airshowfan

Even more interesting are physics teachers who use video-capturing and vision/tracking software to track the Birds’ motion and do things like calculate the value of g in the game (200 pixels per second per second), determine that the launch speed is independent of angle (while in real life the upwards launch speed from a slingshot would be a little less than the horizontal launch speed given the same pull and mass, since the stretchy part would have to overcome gravity during launch) and determine that there is no air resistance (since the horizontal component of the velocity does not decay):

http://www.good.is/post/atlanta-teacher-uses-angry-birds-for-physics-lessons/

https://quantumprogress.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/why-you-should-wait-to-teach-projectile-motion-part-2-introducing-projectile-motion-using-angry-birds/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/physics-of-angry-birds/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/is-the-launch-speed-in-angry-birds-constant/

http://www.good.is/post/atlanta-teacher-uses-angry-birds-for-physics-lessons/

http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/angry-birds-in-the-physics-classroom/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=wpgmath

http://kotaku.com/5815767/angry-birds-happy-physicists
Anonymous

ackpht is incorrect. You do not need the acceleration due to gravity to solve this. The velocity to the pig horizontally is constant and from that the angle can be calculated using basic trigonometry.

The time of flight is given so the candidate does not need to deal with parabolic curves and acceleration.
glaborous immolate

I wonder if that’s an example of test question with cultural bias. If some socio-economic classes couldn’t be familiar with the game, its mere presence and claims of ‘popularity’ might disadvantage them on the test.

Unfortunate, because its a fun example many other groups will probably enjoy.
- kjulig
  
  Exactly. This exam was clearly designed to favor the people of Espoo, Finland.
  - CH
    
    Indeed it does! Although the test question in Espoo would probably involve a Nokia engingeer starting on a bicycle in Keilaniemi at x time, and arriving at the unemployment office in LeppÃ¤vaara at y time, and what is the probability then that he stopped for a beer with his mates in Otaniemi?
- Chevan
  
  You don’t have to be familiar with the game. You could easily answer the question without ever having played the game in your life.
  
  Introductory physics classes teach you how to solve problems with a limited set of well-defined, well-known problem solving strategies. Any student seeing this question on a test has probably already solved this problem dozens of times over the semester. The only thing that varies is the flavor text, and those courses very quickly teach you that the flavor text is completely irrelevant.
- chenille
  
  In Canada we have something called the SIN physics exam, which very often has political set-ups*. I don’t think I ever talked to someone who had trouble with it because of them, though.
  
  * Standing on a frictionless hockey-rink, Lucien Bouchard throws a block at Jean Chretien, causing them to separate.
Anonymous

Why do you need the time of flight?
- rrh
  
  If you fired it very very fast, you could just point it almost straight at the pig. Or you could fire up into the air and it comes down on the pig 30 seconds later. Or fire more slowly at a 45 degree angle.
  
  Knowing the time of flight means you know the launch speed.
dainel

I would have expected this sorts of questions to appear in maths (mechanics)
Anonymous

tan inverse (.5932)
Anonymous

56.01Âº? I think the equation should be set to equal 2, not 0 (for the difference in y).
Anonymous

The angle is arctan((16+25g)/440). For g=9.81 => ~30.6997 degrees
Anonymous

I got a theta of 49 degree or roughly 50. I think you guys are wrong to use arctan, since I used arccotan. My Vnaught was 33.53m/s.
- Anonymous
  
  Your answer places the bird correctly in X but not in Y.
  If you work out your number in the Y direction:
  
  y = V_0*sin(theta)*t – 1/2*g*t^2
  
  Using t = 2.5s (problem constraint) and your theta and V_0 places the bird at an altitude of y = 33.59m instead of the intended 2!
  
  You must have solved for x but not y?