Fast and Furious Physics

The popular Fast and Furious is an action film series centered on illegal street racing and heists. It is famous for its action-packed scenes with impossible car stunts that will leave everyone questioning the fundamental of car race and mechanism of acceleration.This series is full of Newton-defying stunts and many other physics concepts that could be observed  throughout the movie. 

Scenes of cars dropping out of planes at a height of 10,000 feet and go right on rolling along seems kind of impossible. In the movie world, creating an amazing scene would remain the priority and thus letting aside the true physics concept are most of the time ignored by film makers. 

For example, one of the unrealistic scene of fast and furious is the scene of a car dangling off the bridge attached by a steel cable manage to stop and flip a huge tank going at a fast speed. The car would have to be much heavier and the tension of that steel cable would also be high in order for that to happen.

There was also that climactic moment of the Azerbaijan sequence where Dom Toretto accelerates through a ballroom in a fast car high above Abu Dhabi and jump through a window dozens of stories in the air, crossing through the window of the next building and lastly landing on a third building. There should be a projectile motion in that scene, but what we see is that he lands on the same level of the next building. 

In making a movie, we can make any scenarios possible. By understanding,knowing and applying basic physics knowledge, we can accurately calculate the actual speed and acceleration of the cars moving across the streets and compare it to real life situations.