Lifting James' Giant Peach Would Have Required Way More Seagulls Than Roald Dahl Said
James and the Giant Peach Illustration by Nancy Ekholm BurkertPhysicists calculate how many newtons of force would be needed to carry the peach across the Atlantic. Ah, physics: Taking the world's greatest mysteries and turning them into cold, hard facts. Even the mysteries in beloved children's stories. A group of physics students from Leicester University in the UK has subjected James and the Giant Peach, a classic tale by Roald Dahl, to aerodynamic modeling. In the story, orphaned James seeks refuge with a bunch of anthropomorphized insects inside a huge stone fruit, which is then toted across the Atlantic Ocean by a flock of seagulls. Dahl said it would take 501 birds to do the job: "I shall simply go on hooking them up to the stem until we have enough to lift us. They'll be bound to lift us in the end," James explains. In fact, 2,425,907 seagulls would actually...