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Speed was the 1994 smash hit film starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Keanu Reeves plays Jack Traven, an LAPD SWAT team specialist who is sent to defuse a bomb that a revenge-driven extortionist (Dennis Hopper) has planted on a crowded bus. Bullock has to maintain the velocity of the bus at 50mph (or greater) so that the bomb does not explode, killing all on board. The film is a high-octane race of suspense, non-stop action and surprise twists. In a heart stopping, adrenalin pumping moment, the bus turns onto an uncompleted section of a freeway overpass, with a 50-foot gap in the road. Of course they leap the gap - this is Hollywood! Our Hollywood Scientists, using their unique backyard technology, prove the flaws in the movie’s thesis. But what forces are at work in Speed, and how fast and at what angle does the bus have to be to make it? How could you work this out theoretically? We decided to find out...
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