Game Theory: How Does Kirby Fly?

hey game theorists matpat here okay so real talk this episode was originally meant to be the second half of a theory where we explore why Kirby is a threat to dreamland talking about the time he outright kills a father in search of his lost daughter right as they were on the cusp of seeing each other that happens in the game planet robobot ultimately what I was trying to do was build to the reveal that Kirby's origin dates back to an ancient god of destruction an entity that reincarnates every so often with past iterations being some of the biggest baddest of the Kirby bursts including Dark Matter and zero all of this is very heavily implied if you play through some of the hardest battles and Kirby Star allies you have quotes like this one which talks about him waking up to gentle breezes and naptime's design decisions like the boss attacking using a bunch of old dark matter attacks and even stuff like this background being a direct riff on the old backgrounds from Kirby's Dreamland threes boss battle rush to me revelations like these were really interesting and really unexpected I mean it's a Kirby game she don't expect deep intricate lure in a Kirby game but apparently a lot of the Kirby community already knew this stuff even more so a lot of you are just unhappy with how the theory was taking shape so I heard you loud and clear and decided to change directions instead of doubling down and making you all even more mad at me today we're switching gears from the lore of Kirby back over to the science of Kirby hopefully science is just a little less controversial [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello Internet welcome to game theory where has one less note on the whole Kirby lore business if you are interested in diving deeper into the depths of Kirby lore I recommend checking out the channel meteors it spelled meteors with a Z but it actually is just pronounced meteors he's a creator a lot of people pointed me towards in the aftermath of part 1 of the Kirby is a threat episode and his stuff is really good an incredibly thorough even did this awesome thoughtful analysis of that last theory but in a totally fair non-aggressive or call out he way but you gotta say I totally appreciate so show his video some love he's a small crater who's doing some really great work out there all dedicated to Kirby and not getting the attention he deserves click on over he's worth the watch alright so let's talk about science the last time we talked about the science of our pink little puffball we covered everything his elastic body his arm knobblies that seemed capable of grabbing onto things despite him not having any fingers his lack of a skeleton and all of it boiled down to one conclusion kirby is a highly sophisticated amoeba like creature button all my analysis there was one thing that i skipped over one essential ability that truly defines kirby as a character in the words of Jelinski games himself thanks Jack black hope you're able to find that Delgado soon I think that's Spanish for cats so maybe that's a clue oh and since I'm obviously directly addressing you through this contrived opening bit let me take the opportunity to welcome you to the wonderful world of youtubing just know that you are now joining the noble ranks of other elite tubers like James Charles Shane Dawson and Will Smith that's hats that is hot indeed anyway as Jackie boy just pointed out we have to cover Kirby's ability to fly for as much as Kirby's copy ability seems like the most iconic tool in his arsenal it actually wasn't part of Kirby's debut game Kirby's Dreamland instead it first appeared in Kirby's Adventure for the og Nintendo Entertainment System a year later that means that Kirby has been floating around for a year longer than he's been sucking up enemies and swallowing them to copy their abilities and that means it's also a power that's worth investigating so what is his secret how does Kirby fly now the obvious first response that you get from anyone when you ask him this question is that he inhales air everyone knows that when Kirby flies he expands his body and puffs up and that's not just speculation it is confirmed in the instruction manuals sucide the instruction manual from the very first game Kirby's Dreamland quote if you press up on the control pad I can take in a big gulp of air and fly through the skies and then later on that exact same page would again if you press the B button while I'm in the air I can puff out an air pellet that could be used to attack an enemy unfortunately I'll fall like a rock without a big gulp of air just press up and I'll be able to float as good as new but there's one problem with that Kirby would actually become heavier if he inhales that air not lighter I mean think about this Kirby weighs a certain weight whether he's expanded or not he is just the weight of Kirby and he's sucking in air from the atmosphere around him that air is eight 'less it doesn't weigh much certainly but it weighs something so now he's the weight of himself plus the weight of the air that he just swallowed if he couldn't float before well he certainly shouldn't be able to float now the same thing is true of and to show that we actually have two balloons here equal size relatively equal weights but if I start cutting into this one and release the air that's inside of it you'll see that even though well now it's just being propelled downward so it makes it seem like it's heavier but it's not true just give it a second guys the air that's leaving is actually making this deflated balloon much lighter and so we should if we've done this right see this one actually sink lower because inflating a balloon with your breath will actually make it slightly heavier than the deflated balloon because air has mass it has weight that's why all the air molecules on earth are clustered here into what we call an atmosphere it's because they're being oh there goes it's doing it science is working this is science in action ladies into em just really excited I haven't done a science experiments it's like the sixth grade it's really cool but anyway the long short of it is this right air has mass that's why it's clustered around the earth into what we call the atmosphere because the Earth's gravity is literally working on these air molecules pulling them close to the planet if you're adding those air molecules which do have some amount of weight into a balloon suddenly the balloon actually weighs balloon plus air molecules deflated balloon is lighter it doesn't seem like it should make sense but it does a blue an example in fact may be far more relevant than you or I may have first realized look again at the mechanics of what Kirby's doing when Kirby jumps the first time you pressed the button when he's on the ground he just just like a regular old platforming character pressing the button again while he's in midair is what causes him to swell but even then he's still not flying he falls back down to Planet popstar it's much slower but he's still falling it's not until you press the button of third and final time that he actually starts to ascend to rise further you keep pressing the a button and force him to wiggle those little arm now believes but every time you stop you start to descend slowly which leads us back to our original question how then is kirby flying or more accurately how is he falling more slowly with his mouth full of air he is heavier than he was before so then why is it in his expanded form that he falls slow let's look one more time at balloons on a certain level it seems obvious balloons fall slower when they're inflated but they're also heavier when inflated we just proved that via that crappy little experiment that we put together all of this has to do with the thing called air resistance also known as drag if you ever stick your head out the window of a moving car you can feel the drag force of the air on your face or you might have seen demonstrations of the classic gravity experiment done by Galileo where a feather and a bowling ball are both dropped inside of a vacuum inside that vacuum there's no air to create drag and as a result both the feather and the bowling ball hit the ground at the exact same time but outside of a vacuum a feather just takes a really long time to fall and that is the power of air air resistance effects any falling object a falling feather a falling bowling ball heck even a falling piano will encounter a drag force as it falls it's just that for a falling bowling ball or a piano or a falling swamp or in our case a deflated falling Kirby the gravitational force caused by its weight is so great and the drag force on it is so negligible that it's still gonna fall with the drag barely affecting its speed however there are ways that we can affect the drag force look no further than drag race not this sort of drag racer though I can understand the editors confusion since that is the type of drag race that I'm more often than not talking about no in this case I am talking about cars drag race cars to be specific in a drag race after rapidly accelerating to a high speed the dragster starts to deploy a parachute that intentionally creates a huge drag force that allows them to slow down acting like a brake that opposes the forward motion of the car parachutes do the exact same thing only this time we're talking about vertical speeds the longest skydive in history was made by Felix Baumgartner who jumped from a height of over 24 miles or 39 kilometers if you come from a place where your measurement system makes sense at the fastest point of his drop he was going at 833 miles per hour that's 1343 km/h which is fast enough to break the sound barrier and yet after he deployed his parachute the drag force of the air was enough to slow his descent to less than 20 miles an hour so if drag force is enough to slow down a speeding dragster or heck a skydiver who is literally traveling faster than the speed of sound it must be able to do something for our little friend Kirby and the games seem to know this look at Kirby's Epic Yarn this is one of the few games where Kirby actually can't fly he can't inflate himself with air and flap his little nub Lee's around to stay afloat it's probably because he is literally a two-dimensional creature made of yarn instead his usual puff is now replaced with a parachute even the game makers seem to understand the underlying physics of what's going on Kirby doesn't fly he floats and descends slowly he is a sentient little balloon man at least when it comes to flying the calculation for drag force is it's pretty complicated and it depends on a variety of different factors the density of the air the airs viscosity and compressibility and a bunch of other things in fact there are so many factors that go into determining this thing that rather than account for every single variable in the equation most of the time scientists will just run a test to determine the overall coefficient of drag and then base all future calculations for that same object and condition on that initial test however the main thing that we can pull from this drag equation over here is this that drag force is directly proportional to the area of the object that is experiencing that phors this is why skydivers can slightly slow their descent by spreading out their arms and legs it's increasing the area of their body that's exposed to the force of the air it's also why a parachute really slows them down because the area suddenly becomes much bigger than the person themselves so the bigger that Kirby could make himself the bigger the drag force is gonna be and the slower he's gonna be able to fall and what better way to make himself bigger than by poofing himself up like a balloon doing pixel measurements on kirby sprites and Kirby's Dreamland for the Gameboy and comparing that to the size of his poofed up form it shows that when he floats his radius increases by 41% which means his exposed horizontal area is increasing to 100 98 percent of its original size which is nearly doubling the amount of drag force that is acting on his body and this holds true for other games in the series Kirby super star for the SNES that is a 225 percent difference squeaks quad 200 1% etc etc in each and every case by inflating himself up the drag force that Kirby is going to feel is increasing around double of what it was originally for those of you who are about to say but man past the surface area of the sphere is actually four times PI R squared you are technically flexed but remember that drag acts in one direction if Kirby is falling the air is hitting him from low and though Kirti may be a sphere from below curvy shape is a circle so PI R squared the fact that Kirby's a sphere does indeed affect the drag calculations in other ways that he's fear shaped both before and after inflating meaning that the only thing we really care about when calculating the change in drag forces the change in his radius funny enough this tactic has also helped King Dedede a flightless penguin to finally find his wings so to speak oh it's beautiful in recent games he's borrowed some of Kirby's moves poofing himself up to ascend through the air and it's all thanks to kirby as his trophy description and super smash brothers melee reads whoa he's able to suck in air and fly like Kirby does but only as a result of vigorous training he undertook after being bested by Kirby so it turns out that Kirby ain't the only one who makes a habit out of copying his bows abilities this bit of lore also explains why DDD and fly around in some of the earlier Kirby games pumping yourself up to epic proportions as apparently quite the acquired skill especially if you are not a living balloon creature and are instead a penguin with existing biology but more importantly than that it explains why DDD's methods for levitating seems so similar to Kirby suckin some air flap those little winglets and let the drag force of the air push against gravity so there you have it ladies and gentlemen proof of why Kirby is able to fly not only is he a giant amoeba creature he's also like a giant sentient balloon with little flappy wings and remember that is just a theory a game theory thanks for watching boy oh boy oh ah oh don't give me that look you may have everyone else fooled but I know what you really are god of destruction you're welcome internet and world I saved you everyone else thinks he's a innocent kid it's got infinite power I still think that he's a threat I don't care what the rest of you think you don't give babies buttons to the nuclear arsenal that's what Kirby is okay so I popped him threw down my scissors almost stabbed my foot it's why you don't give me scissors either

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 2,442,490

Rating: 4.8671908 out of 5

Keywords: kirby, nintendo, switch, nintendo switch, smash ultimate kirby, kirby smash ultimate, kirby super smash, kirby star allies, kirby super smash bros ultimate, kirby smash, kirby SSBU, kirby switch, something about kirby, who created kirby, kirby lore, kirby default dance, kirby star allies wave 3, kirby theme, kirby music, kirby dreamland, kirby right back at ya, kirby super star, dedede, king dedede, kirby theory, nintendo theory, game theory, game theorists, matpat

Id: XuNJzStBelA

Length: 15min 2sec (902 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Riverforasong]

I wasn't a fan of the live action bits during the lore episodes, but this reminds me of those educational science shows I used to watch as a kid and I think it fits really well.

[u/apearsonio]

Great video, three mistakes I saw.

@ 9:25 Drag racers don't deploy the parachute before the finish line and don't compete to see who can stop on the finish line first. I understand what you were trying to do and the visual is great.

@ 10:00 the text says greater than when MatPat says (and means) less than.

@ 10:08 the greater than sign in backward again.

Overall really enjoyed the video and I'm enjoying the new live format.

[u/Arkminer]

I really liked the overall style of the video. And you decided to explain things. Especially with the real life balloons, rather than normally having a animation for them.

[u/Modeon666]

Either I'm stupid, or you missed one critical detail. All that facts doesn't give you ability to fly up. And Kirby can do it, so he have an ability to gain altitude. And that's can be counteracted if he sucks air from above, launching him upwards, and if he have high body temperature which turn him into a blimp.

(Sorry for my English, it's not my first language)

[u/JinTheBlue]

I'll admit, I knew a lot of the kirby lore previously, but was looking forward to part 2 any way. That said, I appreciate you propping up another creator, and pivoting to what is actually a more interesting topic.

[u/drleebot]

Okay, I think I have to step in an apply my physicist's credentials here, because this video leaves out the key aspect of the buoyant force, which is very important when dealing with the floating/falling of objects with density similar to air (or the medium they're in if not air). It also makes one mistake in describing the balloon experiment that MatPat shows, giving a misleading explanation for why it works the way it does.

TL;DR for Kirby: Extra buoyancy partially cancels out the extra gravity from inhaling air, but doesn't overcome it. If the air Kirby inhales is under no extra pressure from his stretchy skin, the extra buoyancy will exactly cancel out the extra gravity, but won't overcome it, and still won't make flying any easier.

TL;DR for the balloon experiment: It isn't all the extra air inside the balloon that matters, it's the fact that the air inside the balloon is under pressure and thus a bit denser than the surrounding air.

Basically, buoyancy is caused by the medium being at higher pressure at lower altitudes, due to the weight of the rest of the medium on top of it. Imagine you have a giant cube in Earth's atmosphere, with the top of it scraping space and the bottom of it near the ground. The top of the cube will experience almost no pressure from air above it, while the bottom will experience a lot from air below it, resulting in an upward buoyant force. Note that the magnitude of the buoyant force here depends on the volume of the cube (the pressure difference depends on the height, and the net force depends on the pressure times the surface area of the top/bottom). The resulting buoyant force is (after doing a bunch of math):

F_b = d_m * V_o * g

where d_m is the mean density of the surrounding medium, V is the volume, and g is the gravitational acceleration. Compare to the calculation of the force of gravity on the object:

F_g = -m_o * g

where m_o is the mass of the object. Since both gravity and buoyancy act on the object, the net force (before we get into drag) is:

F_bg = (d_m * V_o - m_o) * g

Let's change our variable labeling now, to talk about Kirby in his normal and puffed-up states. In his normal state, we'll say his volume is V1 and his mass is m1, and the net force on him is F1, and in his puffed up state, we'll say his volume is V2 and his mass is m2, and the net force on him is F2. From MatPat's calculations, we know that V2 is approximately 3*V1. He thus inhales at minimum a mass of 2*V1*d_m of air to puff up this much (more if he keeps it under more pressure than the surrounding air, less if he keeps it under less pressure), so his mass m2 is at least m1 + 2*d_m*V1. This gives us:

F1 = (d_m * V1 - m1) * g

F2 = (3* d_m * V1 - m1 - 2*d_m*V1) * g = (d_m * V1 - m1) * g

So as it turns out, F2 is exactly equal to F1. What Kirby gains in extra buoyancy he loses in extra gravity. But what about MatPat's experiment? you might ask. Didn't he show that the balloon full of air weighs more than the empty balloon? Well yes. And this is where my parenthetical in the previous paragraph comes in: "more [mass] if he keeps [air] under more pressure than the surrounding air." The skin of a balloon is stretched out, so it pulls inward, exerting a pressure on the air contained inside, and thus keeping it at a higher pressure (and thus density) than the outside air. This alters the equation slightly, increasing the force of gravity on it a bit more than the buoyant force in the opposite direction is increased, making it heavier.

Presumably, if Kirby's skin is stretchy, the same will be true of him - He'll be pulled downward more when taking in a gulp of air. If he wanted to fly by puffing up, he would have to decrease the density of the air within him, which could be done by stretching himself out without gulping in air, either by pulling himself larger with some special muscles, or by greatly heating up the air inside him. But since we do see him gulp in air, we know this isn't the case.

[u/STOKD22]

So drag does explain why Kirby falls slowly. If you drop a balloon with and without air, the one with air experiences enough drag to fall slowly.

But, this works the other way too. If you throw a balloon up into there air with and without air, the one with air will not go as high, and this is due to the drag. So that drag actually makes it harder to fly, not easier. It does make it easier for him to float though.

Honestly, if I were to guess, Kirby has to have air in him to fly up, and air could be used as a propellant via flatulence. If Kirby could suck in air, then use it as a propellant, it would actually help him to fly and would be limited by his ability to suck in air. Your experiment actually showed this in reverse. When the balloon on the right (your left) was cut into, it used the air as a propellant and actually was exerting more force downward than the other. So the propellant was actually overcoming the weight in air.

Since Kirby has a pocket dimension basically, he could be opening up the equivalent of a vacuum to space to suck up air (which would mean he gets a lot of air), then ejecting it out the back end to fly too. But that could also mean he could just suck up the entire atmosphere into his pocket dimension (as long as he moved the internal pocket dimension around enough to keep a constant vacuum), killing all of the life on the planet... so he would also be terrifying.

Love the show :) keep going, and I do enjoy Austin’s episodes too, it could be fun to see each of you take turns doing lore and science sometimes, great job with the experiment, that was a great example, and it was funny too :)

Edit: Spelling, also, flapping his nubs wouldn’t really count as wings... hope that’s kinda obvious why... wings have to be built and used in a way that creates different airflow above and beneath the wings, creating lift, and Kirby’s arms have virtually no lift coefficient because they are uniform roundish nubs.

[u/TheBurnedMutt45]

Not trying to be a dick, but I wish matpat would go back to the old style of episode with way less live action stuff. I appreciate what he's doing, but I just think that he should leave the live action for his serious and personal videos, not the regular theories

[u/Alphaspartan95]

I enjoyed the intro to the video where he called the internet out and changed theories. Good stuff, Mattpat. Made me smile. 👍