Comments

I saw the film preview. I remember remarking to myself of its kinematic abuse. Glad someone out there had enough free time to quantify the scene's implausibility. Regarding the curmudgeonly fellow above, while the coefficient of kinetic friction is always less than that of static friction, it's hardly ever an order of magnitude less. I applaud Adam Weiner's estimate of mu = 0.5, and in fact I applaud all of his approximations – all sensible in the absence of other known quantities. Furthermore, while it's extremely hard to invoke a force greater than your own weight via friction alone, your body’s limbs can indeed exert a much greater force by simply grabbing or pressing against things. The question then remains, can a person using all muscles available exert a force of 900 pounds? Personally, I can squeeze a bathroom scale to 250lbs using both hands. I can curl 125 pounds. I can leg-press 500 lbs. That sums to just the right amount of total force needed. But I weigh twice as much as the prepubescent Kirk. So the only way for him to stop without flying off the cliff-face to his death is if he had my strength compacted into his body weight. We accept this premise for two reasons – it’s he who grows to become Captain Kirk, and, equally as important, the story is fiction. Neil deGrasse Tyson http://research.amnh.org/users/tyson/