OK, I'm a little excited for the new Aquaman movie. Sure, I've been let down by DC movies before—but we also got Wonder Woman (which was awesome). Also, as a kid my mom made an Aquaman costume for me. She said it was the best costume for me since I had blonde hair (and so did Aquaman). But the real reason was that Aquaman didn't wear a mask—and masks are difficult to make. It was a great costume, thanks mom.

Now for the part where I do what I do—use physics to analyze a movie trailer. Let's get to it.

Although I don't really know what is going on, I know there is a submarine. I also know that Aquaman shoots out of the water and lands on this submarine. It is this scene that I will analyze.

Rhett Allain

Aquaman might be able to swim super fast, but once he leaves the water and enters the air there is only one force acting on him—the gravitational force that pulls straight down. Since the strength of the gravitational force depends on the mass of Aquaman AND the net force is equal to the product of mass and acceleration, the acceleration has to be equal to a constant 9.8 meters per second squared (the value of the local gravitational field).

Once in the air, Aquaman has the same acceleration as a rock that is tossed up. In the air, it's not about Aquaman, it's just about physics. Since it's physics, if I can look at his vertical motion I should be able to figure stuff out. In this situation, I can use video analysis to find his position in each frame of the video. This will give both position and time data so that I can plot his trajectory. Oh, but it's not exactly straightforward. In this scene, the camera (or virtual camera) seems to move forward. This means that the ratio of pixel size in the video to actual size will change with the position of the camera. I can compensate for this changing camera, but it takes some extra steps. If you want to do something like this yourself, check out Tracker Video Analysis. Very useful.