Energy Expenditure of Monsters University’s ‘Slug Monster’
Keywords:
Film, Physics, Mechanics, Energy/mass conservation, Monsters IncAbstract
This paper looks to find the energy expenditure of the Slug monster comically depicted in the film Monster’s University as running incredibly slowly to his lesson. As the Slug is seemingly unaware of time passing by, it is assumed that either due to hypoglycaemia or susceptibility to cold temperatures, the slug occasionally blacks out, meaning he is only running for 6 hours a day for 32 weeks - though to him this seems like one long day. Likening the Slug to the American banana slug, and making suitable assumptions for the Slug’s physical parameters allowed its total energy expenditure to be calculated. It was found he exerts 5.22x109 J of energy in total, which can be attributed to the rapid motion of his arms.
References
Pixar (2013) Monster’s University. Director: Dan Scalon. Released 21 June 2013.
Wilson, J. (2015)Volume of a Frustum of a Cone [Internet]. Available at: http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/emt725/Frustum/Frustum.cone.html [Accessed 11/03/2016]
Math Open Reference (2009) Volume of a cylinder [Internet]. Available at: http://www.mathopenref.com/cylindervolume.html [Accessed 11/03/2016]
Morrow, J. (2000) Biogeography of the Banana Slug (Ariolimax columbianus) [Internet]. Available at: http://online.sfsu.edu/bholzman/courses/Fall00Projects/bananaslug.html [Accessed 24/02/2016]
American University (2012) 2012-2013 Academic Calendar. [Online]. Available at:
http://www.american.edu/provost/registrar/schedule/upload/Academic-Calendar-2012-13-IncWCL-rev-5Mar13-v2-2.pdf [Accessed 23/02/2016].
Wickes (2015) Internal Softwood Doors. [Online]. Available at: http://www.wickes.co.uk/Products/Doors+Windows/Internal-Doors/Internal-Softwood-Doors/c/1000655 [Accessed 23/02/2016].
Tipler, P.A. & Mosca, G. (2008), Physics for Scientists and Engineers, 6th Ed. Freeman.
Wikipedia (2016) Orders of Magnitude (Energy): 107 J [Online]. Available at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy) [Accessed: 23/02/2016].
Downloads
How to Cite
Issue
Section
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).
