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Scene Description

Baahubali: The Beginning is one of the highest-grossing Indian movies ever made. Famous for its great story, direction, and intense action there is a particular scene in this movie where the hero Siva, which is what he was known as during this portion of the cinema, scales a gigantic mountain. Towards the top of this mountain, he is stuck on a small ledge that is under a protruding portion of the top of the mountain. Tying some vines around his waist, Siva makes a makeshift bamboo bow and arrow and ties the vines to the arrow as well. He then proceeds to jump off the ledge and launches the arrow through the tree at the top of the mountain and he climbs up the vines he is attached to till he gets to the top of the mountain. I am going to be analyzing this scene and the physics behind it. I intend to answer these questions during my analysis: Could the arrow be launched with enough velocity to go through the tree? Would the arrow even make it to the top of the mountain? How much force would Siva be using to pull back the arrow?

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Arrow Spring Energy

F = draw width * spring constant

Chest: 44 in = 1.1176 m

Spring constant: 500 N/m Draw width: 0.7 m

(0.5)(500)(0.7)² = 122.5 J

0.7 m

1.1 m

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Mass of Bamboo Arrow

I found a one-meter bamboo bow was found to be 0.7 kg and this arrow is around 3 m so it weighs 0.7*3 = 2.1 kg.

3.0734 m

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Velocity of Arrow

So using conservation of energy (0.5)(500)(1.1)² = (0.5)(2.1)(v)². The velocity of the arrow would be 10.801 m/s. Now for reference, a .223 bullet going 975.36 m/s can not even go through a 10-inch tree which is about (if not less than) the diameter of the tree in the scene. So it is safe to conclude that the arrow would not be able to go through the tree.

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Arrow Max Height

Using a protractor I measured that the arrow was launched at about 57^o. So the vertical component of the arrow’s velocity when launched is sin(57^o)*10.801 = 9.06 m/s. With this derivation for the maximum height the arrow would reach H = v²/(2g), the maximum height of the arrow would be 9.06²/(2*9.8) = 5.95 m.

Now from my frame analysis I found that the top of the cliff was 7.4168 m above where the arrow was launched by using Siva’s height of 1.8542 m as reference. So the arrow would not even make it to the top of the mountain.

3.0734 m

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Pull Force

Now I must determine the force with which Siva would need to pull to bow to get it to the distance that he did. Force Pull = kx and so 500*0.7 = 350 N. I also found that the force Siva would be required to pull the bow with is 350 N and the maximum pull strength for males recorded in a study was 400 N so this is doable.

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References

A. R. (2021, June 20). Bahubali best mountain climbing scene | Bahubali part one best clip. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1qjdlKbANU

6pc Beginner Bamboo Arrow (not selected) | alibow. (n.d.). Alibow. https://www.alibowshop.com/product-page/standard-bamboo-arrow

Bow and Arrow. (n.d.). Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations. https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/presentations/bow-and-arrow

Das, B., & Wang, Y. (2004). Isometric pull-push strengths in workspace: 1. Strength profiles. International journal of occupational safety and ergonomics : JOSE, 10(1), 43–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/10803548.2004.11076594

Prabhas Height, Age, Family, Wiki, News, Videos, Discussion & More. (n.d.). India Forums. https://www.indiaforums.com/person/prabhas_12525

T. S. D. (2023, May 19). How much tree to stop a .223??? YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-h2tCEIL9Y

Yablon, A. (2024, February 29). The Simple Physics That Makes Some Bullets Deadlier Than Others. The Trace. https://www.thetrace.org/2017/06/physics-deadly-bullets-assault-rifles/

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