The Laws of Physics in "Friendship is Magic"

Wile E. Coyote is running after the Road Runner, suddenly he seems to be slowing down... he wonders why and looks down... he realizes there hasn't been ground under him for the past 10 seconds. He stops, looks at the camera, and falls.  

In animation we break the laws of physics fairly frequently, and we also break the 4th wall quite a bit. This is usually for the entertainment value or to engage the audience. I find it fun to try and discern which situations in cartoons were meant to be "In universe" and which were just for the sake of the audience...

Enter My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, a cartoon appearing on the Hub a few years back that garnered a decent following due to the interesting and unique way it handled it's world, characters and situations. It follows Twilight Sparkle and the interactions she has with her friends and the various other characters in the land of Equestria. There are 3 races of ponies that make up Equestria: The Unicorns, the Pegasi, and the Earth Ponies.  They all have their own magical properties but they seem to exhibit physical traits beyond that.  We will be examining what those properties are, and also examining which are in universe solutions and which could be written off as a gag just to be entertaining, if not just "magic".

Now on first glance it may be very easy to write off every situation as "It was magic", but it's exhibited that there are laws of physics present in the world of Equestria. This image is proof that there are laws of physics in the world of Equestria and understanding this we can make conclusions about the way things work there. We'll use it as a starting point for our first theory, which involves exploring the Pegasus race and gravity.

The equations Twilight is studying in the image above are legitimate scientific equations for determining time dilation.  Time dilation is dependent on gravity, therefore assuming the equations are accurate, we can posit that gravity in Equestria works the same way it does in our world. Yet a lot of very odd gravity related things occur in the show, so how can we explain these?

Odd things such as this well known instance where one of the characters, a pegasus named Fluttershy, falls off a cloud and is in free fall for approximately 12 seconds (with a commercial break...but we'll write that off as nothing).  Just inches away from her hitting the ground she's saved by a swarm of butterflies. The butterflies are just slightly off the ground and there's so little inertia that she stays airborne.

There are several ways to explain this. Perhaps mass works differently than it does in our world, maybe her crazy long hair created enough wind resistance that she was falling slower than it seemed or maybe it was just a particularly windy day.  I speculate, however, that pegasi have hollow bones and are generally lighter in order to aid their flight.  Here's another example to back up my claim.

Let's take Daring Do, an Indiana Jones style character, as she explores an ancient temple. Upon finding the relic she was searching for and grabbing it, lava begins filling the room and she attempts to balance on a platform as it raises up to a hole in the ceiling.  Upon reaching the hole a burst of steam erupts and she flies upward with unnatural force.

If Gravity is the same in our worlds a full grown horse would not be blown miles into the sky by a single burst of steam. She isn't flapping her wings as one of them is broken in this scene. We have to assume she is very light.  One more example:

In this scene, the friendly southern character Applejack is coerced by a pegasus named Rainbow Dash to use a seesaw to launch her into the air to help with her stunt flying.  After missing a few times she hits the mark and Rainbow Dash goes flying off into oblivion.  Rainbow was knocked down at the time so she was not flying, it was all the force of the seesaw.  Assuming they are both around the same weight and energy transfers as we would expect it to, she should not have gone far past the tower.  Applejack does not appear to be made of Element-118 and their body sizes don't differ all that much, so Rainbow Dash must simply weigh far less.  Perhaps this also explains why Pegasi are the only race able to stand on clouds (Other races need a spell in order to be able to stand on them).

Some days you just can't win.

While were on the subject of conservation of energy, it doesn't always apply in the world of Equestria. There's an incident where Twilight is bouncing on rocks, and at points where she should very clearly be losing momentum and height she keeps going.

Energy and force have also been shown to work in reverse, as it is with the Pegasus produced sonic boom.  Rainbow Dash, who claims to be the "Fastest Thing in Equestria" attempts to do what no other pony could do, fly so fast as to create a sonic boom, or in her case a "Sonic Rainboom". It sounds fine enough for animation but then you get to the scene itself:

Here we can see the vapor cloud and condensation cone start to appear... yet she hasn't even broken the sound barrier at this point. These are usually seen when atmospheric water is quickly condensed due to the shock waved associated with supersonic speed.  It gets even stranger, as she fails the first attempt to even get that far.  She gets shoved back as if she hit a net.  This would not happen. If you fail to break the sound  barrier you will just keep going, There is no giant force that will suddenly push you away as if you're trying to enter Earth's atmosphere.  

These characters go through a lot of gravitational and inertial pressure, it must be magic!...  Either that or these ponies are made of some unknown malleable substance that has yet to even be discovered... Speaking of that...

Let's talk about squash and stretch and the general insane malleability of these characters.  I theorize that the stretchy nature of these characters is a part of the universe and their bodies and not just an animation trick.  The squash and stretch in this show hangs for far more frames than it normally would and is noticed by other characters and not just the audience.  In this image below the character Pinkie Pie holds this pose for an entire sentence.

But then again there are other things going on with her...

Yeah...

They aren't just visually malleable though, their speed and strength tends to change from scene to scene. Take for example Big Macintosh, an earth pony.  The earth pony race is generally shown to be fairly powerful but in one scene he can be shown struggling with a single cart and in another scene he's dragging a house behind him with very little apparent effort.

And another example with Rainbow Dash, the "Fastest thing in Equestria", she is shown to indeed be faster than any other pony in the land. However, in one particular instance, she is trying to get away from Pinkie Pie (who is slowly bouncing after her, Pepe Le Pew style), Dash is speeding around seemingly going mile long lengths in seconds, yet every time she stops Pinkie Pie is right next to her.  However, you could make a case for breaking the 4th wall here, as Pinkie Pie is a character known for doing that.

Speaking of alternative ideas, my theories aren't without issues, there are places where the theories of physics simply don't apply, this is a show where "magic" is a property after all.  I said earlier that gravity generally followed the laws of our world and this is why I believe pegasi are generally lighter than the other races.  Gravity generally functions in Equestria... but sometimes:

It doesn't.

A second point against that same theory is the idea that only Pegasi can stand on clouds. 90% of the time it is stated that no other races can physically interact with clouds, yet there is one moment in which most of the main cast was saved by a cloud as they are falling. A single incident that breaks a huge rule established earlier:

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic bends and breaks the laws of physics, not only the physics of our world but of it's own established laws of physics, in order to engage and entertain the audience.  Some might say that a cartoon's universe should stick rigidly to the boundaries it set up and for the most part I agree, but I don't see the harm in aiming for the absurd, much like the cartoons of the past.  Wile E. Coyote walked off a cliff and didn't fall until he noticed he was walking on air. That is something I had not seen in a long time, and I watch a lot of modern cartoons, yet here it is once again.  The physics in Friendship is Magic depend on what it wants it's audience to feel. This is a show that established a single character as being able to break the 4th wall on a whim, while also engaging it's audience when something resembling real world physics are happening. It's an impressive blend if nothing else.