“You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!” – The force needed for Lisa to pull off Johnny’s arm (from the movie The Room)
Keywords:
Film, Biology, Physics, Mechanics, Material properties, Johnny, The RoomAbstract
In the 2003 cult classic American drama The Room, during an argument between the two leads Johnny and Lisa, Johnny says “you’re tearing me apart, Lisa!” This paper investigates the force required by Lisa to literally detach Johnny’s arm from his body. The ultimate tensile strength of the glenoid labrum (the weakest segment of the arm, where it meets the shoulder) was found to be 6390000 Nm-2, and the cross-sectional area of Johnny’s arm was determined to be 3.14x10-4 m2. This allowed the force to be calculated as 2006.46 N. It was concluded that it would not be possible for Lisa to detach Johnny’s arm, with her maximum pulling force being 614.49 N (31 % of the actual force needed).
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