The Monkey King’s Somersault

Authors

  • Yannic Chen The Centre for Interdisciplinary Science, University of Leicester

Keywords:

Book, Physics, Mechanics, Sun Wukong, Journey to the West

Abstract

The Monkey King is a famous fictional character from ancient Chinese literature. A famous saying is that he can travel a distance of 54,000km on a somersault. Such a distance requires a jump height of 13,500km. This feat is inefficient on the Earth, which has dimensions smaller than the jump and as a result, may only be helpful in the Heavenly Kingdom with unknown properties and parameters.

References

Nave, R. (no date). Trajectories. Retrieved 28. February 2014 from Hyperphysics: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/traj.html

Rosenberg, M. (14. September 2012). Basic Earth Facts. Retrieved 28. February 2014 from About.com: http://geography.about.com/od/learnabouttheearth/a/earthfacts.htm

National Geographic. (no date). Earth's Atmosphere. Retrieved 28. February 2014 from National Geographic: http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/earth/earths-atmosphere/

Encyclopedia Astronautica. (no date). SSME. Retrieved February 27, 2014, from Astronautix: http://www.astronautix.com/engines/ssme.htm

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How to Cite

Chen, Y. (2017). The Monkey King’s Somersault. Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics, 3. Retrieved from https://journals.le.ac.uk/index.php/jist/article/view/745

Issue

Vol. 3 (2014)

Section

Articles

License

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.  All content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC-BY 4.0).