Monday, November 03, 2008

Corruption: Physics mystery at Shawshank

There's a handful of movies that I'll sit and watch at least a portion of any time they're on. Shawshank is one of them, which I happened to catch a few days ago. But when I got to the end this time, something caught my attention that I had never noticed or questioned before.

Just before Andy broke through the prison's plumbing system and crawled through that river of shit, he slammed a rock into the pipe a handful of times to get it to break. Now assuming that it was made of some type of lead/galvanized steel, how did he puncture it using just a rock? And then how was he able to carve out a perfectly round hole big enough to fit through? Do you know if any of that is even possible? I have two thoughts on the subject:

1. He wouldn't have been able to break it using only a rock.
2. Even if he could have, he probably wouldn't have known that beforehand, which makes his overall plan rather suspect right from the start.

Please tell me I'm wrong. I hate to find flaws in my favorite movies.

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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous Says:

    I always presumed that he found a rusted/weakened section of the pipe, though I don't know how that large a section could have rusted over enough to become susceptible to force. I'll have to research further...

  2. Jerms Says:

    yeah i mean if you think about it, he didn't have blueprints for the prison, right? it had to be a sort of trial and error, once he got through the wall of his cell he must have found the weak area of the pipe, etc etc.

    he definitely did know he was gonna be climbing through the sewage though, cuz he brought that plastic bag w/ him to put his clothes in.

    i always felt that simply that tube was not big enough to fit his shoulders through it.