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Physics Goes To Hollywood 228

Posted by simoniker from the relax-when-you-study-it dept.
pigreco314 writes "What do films like Independence Day, Armageddon and X-Men have in common? The answer is that apart from costing millions of dollars to make, they all feature in a new course called Physics in Films that is being taught to students at the University of Central Florida, according to PhysicsWeb. Costas Efthimiou, the mathematical physicist who teaches the course, believes that non-science students learn more about the fundamentals of physics by studying films and science fiction than they do from more traditional approaches." Among the topics discussed is "the conservation of momentum in Tango and Cash."
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Physics Goes To Hollywood More

Physics Goes To Hollywood

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  • in related news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:34AM (#8957972) Journal
    mind this studies [intuitor.com] :)
    • I think this "class" is another example of our colleges going to hell.

      I would refuse to attend a physics class that used freaking X-Men to teach me physics. How about using that class time to instead let me listen to a lecture by a famous physicist? What is Wolverine going to teach me that he wouldn't?

      • I would refuse to attend a physics class that used freaking X-Men to teach me physics.

        Here here. I mean, come on, physics in the movies? Please. When's the last time you saw a movie where an explosion in space does not make any noise? Any intelligent person with even basic physics knowledge has to make a conscious effort to ignore the blunders when watching a movie. And I mean ANY movie that involves a bit of action. Otherwise he gets caught in questions like "why the hell are they walking on Mars just

  • ummm.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by zcat_NZ ( 267672 ) <zcat@wired.net.nz> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:35AM (#8957974) Homepage
    For every slashdotting, there is an equal and opposite failure of the webserver?

  • Sounds fun... (Score:5, Informative)

    by shrykk ( 747039 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:37AM (#8957977)
    But it's just another course trying to entice non-science students to do science. What's the point?

    In UK universities in 2003, there were around 35,000 applications made to study Sports Science BSc. To study Materials Science, 37. Just thirty-seven.

    Which do you think produces better scientists?

    • Re:Sounds fun... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by samhalliday ( 653858 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:45AM (#8957994) Homepage Journal
      But it's just another course trying to entice non-science students to do science

      no... its really not. the guy giving the course theorises that the general public learns more from movies than school classes. he doesn't want more physics students; he meerly wishes the movies to more accurately portray physics, and not have more classic "mission to mars" physics (newton? who was he then?)

      Which do you think produces better scientists?

      well, even that's debatable ;-) [by the way, i think your numbers are off... my UG uni alone takes about 20 students a year on materials physics]

      • Re:Sounds fun... (Score:2, Informative)

        by shrykk ( 747039 )
        The source was Professional Engineering Magazine. Probably have the issue around somewhere.
        • aah.. its probably only quoting people doing the single course with the exact title "material science"; i would just throw that statistic to /dev/null as most material scientists i know of did physics specialising in materials (and besides, its a much more hardcore course)
        • The implication of the way you quoted the figure was that it was rather specifically B.Sc. courses in Materials Science. No-one at Cambridge does a B.Sc. in MatSci, for example, but there are plenty of people who come out with a B.A. having studied MatSci as part of a Natural Sciences degree.

    • Re:Sounds fun... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT ( 651184 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @08:09AM (#8958139) Homepage Journal
      But it's just another course trying to entice non-science students to do science. What's the point?

      To answer your question in general:

      What's the point? The point is that we need as many people as possible gaining as much exposure to science education as possible. You don't teach people about things like "scientific method" or the notion that we have theories that are constantly revised under scrutiny, or Occams razor, and 20 years down the line you have a five billion dollar a year [healthcentral.com] "magnetic medicine" industry.

      Sadly, as it's not legal for me to wait around the corner and thrash the people coming out of, say, the magnet shop with a broom, it looks like the best we can do is try to educate their children to think for themselves. Here's a prescription: scientific education helps treat and prevent anxiety, gullibility and irrational prejudice.

      • Re:Sounds fun... (Score:5, Funny)

        by robfoo ( 579920 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @10:14AM (#8958634) Homepage
        Hey, don't knock Magnet Medicine. My uncle complained that his Windows kept crashing. So I put a couple of strong magnets on his hard drive, and hey presto - problem went away!
      • Here's a prescription: scientific education helps treat and prevent anxiety, gullibility and irrational prejudice.

        It may help, but it's not perfect. I know a really smart guy with a PhD in Geology. He's way into astrology. Lot's of educated people believe in weird things, not to mention all those university professors in Rwanda that engaged in some very violent prejudice.

        I suppose without scientific education it would be much, much worse, however. [intriguing.com].

      • Here's a prescription: scientific education helps treat and prevent anxiety, gullibility and irrational prejudice.

        I understand your point, but I have to disagree with this statement. Training in science doesn't automatically make you a logical and rational person. It gives you those skills, but using them requires a conscious and concerted effort. I've met plenty of scientists that are plenty bright in their fields, but are just as moronic as the next guy when it comes the swallowing news media hype or po
    • In UK universities in 2003, there were around 35,000 applications made to study Sports Science BSc.

      Yes, but those 35,000 applicants all aspire to being self-employed personal trainers earning 40 pounds/hour. Compare that to the career opportunities for science graduates and can you blame them?
      • Yeah, I'm glad I'm doing a Computer Science degree. I know that when I graduate I'm gonna be earning about 40 pounds/hour freelance programming for some up-and-coming dotcoms. No, wait... :)

    • Re:same school, different course (Score:4, Interesting)

      by platypussrex ( 594064 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @10:16AM (#8958648)
      Can't get to the site to rtfa, but I had a similar course from the same University (different prof) over 25 years ago. It was called "The Physics of Science Fiction" and the premise was that we would read various works of popular science fiction (and watch some movies) and consider how the "laws of physics" were either the same or different in their universes.

      Wasn't a bad class really. We read Fred Hoyle, Larry Niven, Hal Clement, and some others that I don't remember. It gave a decent introduction to basic phsyics and was fairly popular on campus amongst the nonscience majors. (I took it because the prof was a friend of mine and said I would enjoy it.)

      Courses like this are certainly not going to replace traditional lab physics for science majors, but they can do a fine job of making science more interesting to some students who normally don't enjoy it.

    • Re:Sounds fun... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ifwm ( 687373 )
      It sounds like you're making a value judgement about what a good scientist is. Is a psychologist, who strictly adheres to scientific method a good scientist? What about economists?

      As to the point, I submit that it helps people think SCIENTIFICALLY, i.e. using scientific method. That alone justifies the course in my book.

      UCF Class of 2001
      and hopefully 2005 as well.

  • Course in physics by counter-examples, probably (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:43AM (#8957990)
    Action movies are notorious for not respecting basic laws of physics. For example:

    - A guy gets shot by a bullet, gets thrown backward 10 feet.

    - A car jumps over something without a launching pad

    - A car jumps over something and flies straight into the air, and lands flat (real cars tip forward when they do that)

    - A computer hacker does something real quick on a computer because someone's coming, downloads or save something in half a second

    - A woman drinks a tainted glass of wine, drops immediately after the first sip

    - A red-caped, blue spandexed lunatic hoists busses, entire bridges into the air ...etc...

    • Re:Course in physics by counter-examples, probably (Score:5, Funny)

      by acehole ( 174372 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:49AM (#8958006) Homepage
      A woman drinks a tainted glass of wine, drops immediately after the first sip

      rophynil: "When patience just isnt enough"

      Now in spray form, for the discreet gentleman.

    • You forgot the best one of all, present in so many SF movies I can't even count them: the aft-thrusters-at-full-power, ship-swerving-like-it's-an-airplane, powered crash landing, complete with audible explosion and (more recently) an annulus of shockwave through the vacuum.

      True, anyone with a decent high school education should detect that as total BS, but I know many people who never even notice anything odd when spaceships routinely fly around with their engines at full power no matter what they're doing

      • Why? It's fiction anyway (Score:5, Interesting)

        by October_30th ( 531777 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @07:11AM (#8958052) Homepage Journal
        Is it so hard to reinforce correct physics in people's minds, instead of this hogwash?

        And why should we want to? As a physicist I am more annoyed by the people who insist on having correct physics in movies (or books) than the incorrect physics itself.

        Hello? It's a movie! Not a documentary or part of a curriculum. At least to me hard sci-fi like R.L. Forward's Dragon's Egg is immensely boring.

        • Re:Why? It's fiction anyway (Score:5, Insightful)

          by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @08:10AM (#8958140) Homepage Journal
          Blockquoth the poster:

          And why should we want to?

          Because in a democracy it is the general citizenry who make the ultimate decisions, and because in this democracy much of the citizenry's information comes from the media such as movies. (That BTW itself is a scandal.)

          I don't care if the physics is wrong, if it's wrong for a reason. It's the casually-wrong things -- the things clearly wrong because the even the writer doesn't understand -- that really ticks me off.

          Remember that people will be making decisions on what to fund and what to prohibit. Do you want them making those decisions based on poor science they've picked up in the movies? How are they supposed to know it's bad scince? Well, one way (simply enough) is to tell them -- which is what these sites and courses do.
        • Well, it depends how bad the physics is and how much it runs against your common sense, doesn't it? There's nothing wrong with a little poetic license, especially if you're not skilled enough to pull off something realistic, but when you constantly use it as a crutch to your pathetic talants it gets pretty silly.

          Star Trek's a perfect example, from the cartoony CGI (who needs shadows?) to disgustingly badly portrayed.. well, I could say just about anything; AI, weaponry, people, aliens.. there's no moody s

      • Re:Course in physics by counter-examples, probably (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Yorrike ( 322502 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @07:34AM (#8958078) Journal
        If you want a movie with more betrayals of science per frame than any other, watch "The Core". The concept is utterly shameful.

        A ship made of Unobtainium (granted, they joke about this in the film), drills to the center of the Earth so it can let off nuclear explosions to restart the outer core spinning, thus restoring the Earth's magnetosphere.

        On the way to the outer core, the ship encounters a geode the size of a small moon and giant diamonds, all while ignoring the fact that the upper mantle in effectively solid, and at the pressures and temperature encountered at the depth they're at, a nuclear explosion isn't going to do squat.

        The mere fact they send a manned probe down is laughable.

        Now I know it's just a movie, and having some geology knowledge, I must admit it was a laugh a minute, but it took it's self far too seriously to be given credit, never mind a character being employed to "hack the internet" and stop all documents with certain keywords moving about.

        If it were done in the style of Starship troopers, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it, but as is, bleh.

        • Based on what you've pointed out. In hollywood movies there's nothing a good nuke can't solve. Nothing.
        • If you want a movie with more betrayals of science per frame than any other, watch "The Core". The concept is utterly shameful.

          Perhaps betrayals of scientific *fact*, but I thought it was actually fairly accurate in how it portrayed scientific *culture* -- in particular the uneasy relationship between "media-scientists", who spend their time talking to the press, hosting TV shows, etc. and the scientists that actually do research.
        • Well, you missed the best parts then:
          The scene with the shuttle. The whole thing - the radars not working for some reason, the GPS failing and no-one noticing (it must be the pilot's fault.) Maneuvring the shuttle as if it was not a brick but an F16.

          Noone in the entire science community outside of the small group of the primary participants noticing the disappearence of the magnetic field and of the secondary data - Aurora Borealis, or the fact the compases don't work any more :) The ionosphere that mus
      • Geez, I remember being a kid seeing star wars for the first time in the theather and being completly blown away. You probably went, "you can hear a ships engines in space, laser is invisible in a vacuum, etc".

        For some reason I think I have a lot more fun in live.

        Get a life some of us see movies to be entertained, not to see applied physics.

        Your kind was making movies and boring audiences when a guy called George Lucas stepped in and changed movies. He made them fun again. (and then ruined it with episode

      • Re:Course in physics by counter-examples, probably (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @08:32AM (#8958177)

        You forgot the best one of all, present in so many SF movies I can't even count them: the aft-thrusters-at-full-power, ship-swerving-like-it's-an-airplane, powered crash landing, complete with audible explosion and (more recently) an annulus of shockwave through the vacuum.

        Execpt that shockwaves and sounds do travel through space.

        An explosion simply means that matter moves very fast outwards from the centre of the explosion. In an atmosphere, the moving particles hit the particles of the atmosphere and transfer their kinetic energy to them, and those particles hit other particles, and so forth. When they hit you, they transfers their kinetic energy into your outer particles, which transfer it onward, making the shockwave propagate through you, throwing you backwards (if you are light/unsecured) and causing damage as if you were hit by a blunt object (which you were - air). You sense the changing pressure as sound.

        On the other hand, in space, nothing stops the original particles from the explosion. They travel through space until they hit something. When they do, they transfer their kinetic energy into its outher layer (which will transfer it onward and so on, causing an internal compression/decompression wave), throwing it backwards and causing damage as if it was hit by a blunt object (which it was - a blunt wall of particles). If it has audio sensors, it will sense the pressure change (compression/decompression) as sound.

        Of course, a TIE Fighter should still glide silently...

        It should also be noted that, according to the theory of realitivy, when mass is accelerated, a gravity wave is created. So if you blow up a planet, it will cause a shockwave in the fabric of spacetime itself. However, due to the weakness of gravity as a force, such shockwaves are usually below notice.

        I recall reading that if Alpha Centauri would go supernova, the resulting shockwave would tear off Earth's atmosphere. But hey, that could make the ultimate sci-fi movie - Alpha Centauri is going to supernova, and the only way to stop it is freezing a group of old astronauts and sending them there in a shuttle to dig into it's core to deliver a bunch of nuclear bombs to restart fusion reaction there, all the while a black monolith ruling an evil space empire sends its space orc minions flying in space fighters that make a "swhooshing" sound as they fly by and turn on a dime, because the monolith needs the energy from an exploding star to recharge its power systems to continue its 5 million year mission to explore new worlds and civilizations and to conquer them, but fortunately the princess of the aliens (which just happen to look completely human) in the planet the space shuttle falls into after being shot down by the fighters has hots for the hero and helps him develop his magical powers, so he can help his friends when the Monolith kidnaps them and reveals it's actually his father and that the aliens really look like giant spiders and are just using their awesome telepathic abilities to make an illusion of appearing humanlike, and were actually the ones who lured the astronauts there to breed with them because they, like many spiders, eat their males after coupling, and have none left anymore, and how he, the monolith, has send his armadas to attack and conquer Earth, but fortunately the hero manages to resolve the problem with his spider lover with an clever use of a gag, causing the spiders to alliy themselves with Earth and drive off the invaders, which is fortunate because the monolith has destroyed their home planet in a fit of rage, bt fortunately the power of love between the hero and the spider allows them to defeat it, marking the beginning a new age of enlightenment and really kinky interspecies relationships in Earth (literally in, because everone forgot about the supernova, but fortunately Earth turned out to be hollow, with a new, primordial world inside, and primordial savages turned out to be no match for the enlightened army of surface humans armed with flame throwers and assault rifles, not to mention missiles and nukes, helped by giant kinky cannibalistic telepathic space spider chicks).

        Oscar gala, here I come :) !

    • Re:Course in physics by counter-examples, probably (Score:4, Informative)

      by MartinG ( 52587 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @07:32AM (#8958076) Homepage Journal
      - A car jumps over something and flies straight into the air, and lands flat (real cars tip forward when they do that)

      I agree with the main point that it tips forward while in the air, but that doesn't guarantee how it will land.

      That depends on how it was launched.

      There are many ways it could land as long as angular momentum is conserved.

      When using a ramp, gravity will have spent longer accelerating the front of the car towards the ground than the back simply because the front is unsupported by the ramp for longer. This means the cars front will tip forward as you suggest, but depending on the launch angle and speed (and other factors such as car length and mass) it could land flat if it touched the ground before it had tipped enough. Conversely if might not tip enough and could hit the ground with the back first.

      Another example could be a car jumping from a great height. If calculated properly it could complete one or more full "somersaults" in the air before landing flat (of course any normal car would be smashed to pieces in doing so because it would be in the air for so long and reach such a high downward speed)
    • One of my fondest memories of a final exam is a physics problem dealing with the acceleration needed for Superman to catch a baby that fell off of a skyscraper, and what acceleration was needed to slow to 0 velocity as they both reached the ground.
    • A guy gets shot by a bullet, gets thrown backward 10 feet.

      IIRC George Stevens started this 'technique' (or at least popularised it). Having returned from WW2 where he had seen the effect that real bullets have upon the human body he wanted to re-enact that on the screen.

      skribe

    • A woman drinks a tainted glass of wine, drops immediately after the first sip

      Actually, if you use the right chemicals under good circumstances, along with a few careful preprations , this will actually work. The effect will last about 6 hours after which the woman will wake up, not recalling anything at all. Even better, the body will remain warm, supple and won't discolour.

      Or so I heard... Ahem.

    • - A car jumps over something without a launching pad

      - guy on skateboard falls into gorge, gets rescued by helicopter stretcher hoist, gets placed in ambulance, ambulance crashes into tree (opening back doors), guy wheels out and back down the gorge
    • A computer hacker does something real quick on a computer because someone's coming, downloads or save something in half a second

      My favorite movie for computer mistakes is Blown Away. It's about the bomb squad or something. The opening scene is the best. There's this girl who had a wacked out geek boyfriend. He rigged her computer so that she would have to keep typing "i love you" so that it wouldn't explode. The boyfriend was dead for some reason so they called the hero of the film to come over and f
    • My favourite pet peeves:

      American kids are at high-school until their late 20s. (unlike Grange Hill [grangehill.com] for example). This is explained by them never having anything to learn in class or having homework (or school uniforms come to that). I know there is at least one guy in his late 40s at high school in India who is still trying to pass his exams, but statistically I would have thought the majority of americans should have graduated from high school at least by the age of 21.

      The speed of sound == the speed of

  • Sounds awfully familiar (Score:3, Informative)

    by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscowar ... .com minus punct> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:48AM (#8958004) Journal
    Can't quite find the previous Slashdot story though this one [slashdot.org] is close.

    But Tango and Cash dangling from electric cables as part of a physics course? This is kinda old news. [aip.org]

  • Physics Goes to Hollywood (Score:3, Interesting)

    by boltoflightning ( 765782 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:50AM (#8958010) Homepage
    I thought your post was very interesting.

    I say WHATEVER WORKS. People (not just kids) don't always learn what is taught by traditional means. I know --i-- didn't. Seeing something visually or in new ways can sometimes more easily or quickly create understanding.

  • Useful Links.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Scrab ( 573004 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:50AM (#8958011)
    Movie physics site [intuitor.com]

    BBC Link [bbc.co.uk]

    And would they cover things like the cranking the van up the sand dune in Ice Cold In Alex [imdb.com]

  • BBC/OU "Hollywood Science" (Score:5, Informative)

    by alanw ( 1822 ) * <alan@wylie.me.uk> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:51AM (#8958016) Homepage
    The BBC and the Open University have produced a series Hollywood Science [open2.net] in which Robert Llewellyn (Kryten in Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars) examines the science behind Hollywood movies.
    Can Jackie Chan really bend iron bars? Is Paul Newman's stomach capable of holding 50 eggs? Does that bus really have enough Speed to jump the gap?

    • Re:BBC/OU "Hollywood Science" (Score:4, Interesting)

      by robbyjo ( 315601 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @07:33AM (#8958077) Homepage

      Summary:

      • Can Jackie Chan really bend iron bars? (Shanghai Noons)
        Yes, because cotton is stronger when wet.
      • Is Paul Newman's stomach capable of holding 50 eggs? (Cool Hand Luke)
        No. His mouth would've run out of saliva or wouldn't be able to hold the water if he decided to drink.
      • Does that bus really have enough Speed to jump the gap? (Speed)
        No. It's too far, not to mention wind resistance and the angle.
      • Can aluminium dingy in Dante's Peak really melts?
        No. Aluminium would take a whole lot of stronger acid.
      • Can crank shaft of the 1930's truck to winch it backwards up the sand dune really set it free from the gulch? (Ice Cold Alex)
        Possible, although the cranker needs quite a lot of water.
      • Can John McClane just wrap a hose and leaps to the side of the building when it explodes? (Die Hard)
        Impossible. The hose wouldn't be able to hold the acceleration due to gravity

      • Ob Die Hard stuff (Score:4, Interesting)

        by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @08:04AM (#8958128) Homepage Journal
        Blockquoth the poster:

        Can John McClane just wrap a hose and leaps to the side of the building when it explodes? (Die Hard)
        Impossible. The hose wouldn't be able to hold the acceleration due to gravity

        Blockquoth the BBC site:

        By looking at the film shot by shot, we estimate that he falls about 35 floors,

        Very impressive, since it the building is only 32 or 33 floors high (indicated several times in the movie). It also implies 105 m of fire hose, which is itself ludicrous. However, the fall is "really" only a few floors (say, 4, if you take the building to be 34 floors and he ends up back on floor 30), his final speed would have been 16 m/s rather than the 46 m/s the BBC got.

        Does it matter? Well, it turns out that the BBC thinks "head shear" would have killed McClane, because his "severity index" was 3018, way above the fatal number (about 1000). But their speed is high by a factor of about 3, and the speed appears in that equation raised to the 2.5 power. So his "real" idex would be about 16 times lower, or 190.

        But interestingly, this is only about half of the index required to knock you out. So actually, using numbers more consistent with the film, you find that not only does McClane survive the fall, he is not knocked out!

        All of the stress arguments also depend on this bad speed, but since they concluded he'd survive the overly-strong stop, he's OK at the lower speed too.

        BTW, I don't know how elastic firehose is, but they neglected its retarding effect as he fell, too.
      • If competative eaters can polish off 50 hotdogs in under 12 minutes, I'm sure our protagonist can do fifty eggs... unless they were OSTRICH eggs.

  • Movies can't depict real physics (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Stuwee ( 739059 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @06:51AM (#8958017)
    Since they're currently experiencing a "server failure", I can't comment on the course content as such, but there are vital pieces of physics that simply cannot be taught from watching a movie. You can talk about conservation of energy in a car crash, sure. You can laugh at the physical impossibility of that bit in Hollow Man [imdb.com] where the chick opens a door with an electromagnet. You could even try to talk about "time folding over" in Event Horizon [imdb.com].

    The fact of the matter is however that physics is made interesting when you actually think about it yourself and realise why it is interesting. If someone makes a movie that makes relativity or quantum physics interesting enough to justify the cost of the movie, then I take my hat off to them.

    This just sounds like another course to fill credits.

  • The problem... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by toesate ( 652111 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @07:00AM (#8958037) Journal
    is essentially due to traditional classroom coaching method which leave little room for imagination.

    On the other hand, Physics(or Science) illustrated in movies, could in a few subtle scenes, tickle the itch to followup, run imagination wild, to validate or invalidate flaws or ideas, just for the sake of geekiness.

    I only wished that factual subjects can be written like novels, with a page turner storyline...

  • Matrix (Score:4, Funny)

    by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @07:01AM (#8958039) Homepage
    The Matrix: Revolutions, unfortunately, did not make the list of top 3 movies that were physics accurate, due to the complete disregard for the rules of physics.

    I guess the machines forgot what theories Newton came up with, so thats why all the theories taste like chicken.

    • I guess the machines forgot what theories Newton came up with

      Well, that's how flight works, right? You fall and conveniently are distracted and forget to hit the earth.

  • History too (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cvd6262 ( 180823 )
    One of my best professors used to say that history is only there to help us understand movies.

    No different?

  • Bad examples (Score:5, Informative)

    by canavan ( 14778 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @07:18AM (#8958057)
    I always thought teaching of phsics with movie would be most efficient by showing the bad examples, so people won't start to think that reality is governed by the same mad-up laws of physics as seen in most action flicks. Lots of bad examples are listed at INSULTINGLY STUPID MOVIE PHYSICS [intuitor.com]
    • Indeed, an excellent set of bad examples. The site also illustrates one of the difficulties of trying to teach physics to the masses: as soon as you want to know how it really works, you have to use math. Granted, working out that the victim of a shotgun shooting flying ten feet through the air violates conservation of momentum is a more interesting exercise than what you find in most physics texts, but you still have to work it out. Just an opinion, but too many students these days have had everything made

  • BS in BS (Score:5, Funny)

    by Trurl's Machine ( 651488 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @07:24AM (#8958067) Journal
    Since most of the Hollywood movies physics is nothing but pure bullshit, this course could give you the one and only degree of double BS - Bachelor Of Science In Bullshiting!
  • Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics

    http://intuitor.com/moviephysics/index.html

  • Weep!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by mritunjai ( 518932 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @07:44AM (#8958094) Homepage
    So you guys are now learning physics by watching movies!!!

    So, don't cry when your physics reasearch gets outsourced.

    Make learning fun... but NOT a JOKE !!

  • Other examples? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by StateOfTheUnion ( 762194 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @07:58AM (#8958117) Homepage
    So should the military teach combat by showing Rambo movies? Perhaps convicts can learn to be nice people by watching episodes of Family Matters. I'm thinking about opening a Salvage Yard, I'm gonna do some market research by watching Sanford and Son.

    • Re:Other examples? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Nebu ( 566313 )

      So should the military teach combat by showing Rambo movies?

      Actually, this might not be a bad idea. Most army recruits are young males, and as such, most of them have probably seen a couple of action movies. Pointing out irrealistic sequences in those movies would probably be a good way to correct misconceptions the general public might have about tactics.

      One example that immediately comes to mind is showing them a clip of someone ducking behind a table during a gun fight and telling the recruits that

  • It looks like Hollywood will soon have another chance to redeem its portrayal of science in movies.

    The trailer [thedayaftertomorrow.com] for The Day After Tomorrow looks great, and certainly has a strong message about global warming in the film (just don't try to visit their website over a modem!) Starts May 28th.

  • The BBC with Open University did a really good science series called Hollywood Science. Link [open2.net].

    Originally it was aired late at night but got moved to a more prime slot, I can't remember what time. Anyway it was very good and accessible because one of the presentors is Robert Llewellyn [imdb.com], the actor who played Kryton in Red Dwarf.

    Its definetelly worth seeing if you ever get the chance.
  • ...I'd say posting their story on /. was a practical real life lesson in entropy. (Or at the very least Chaos Theory: "Some where across the ocean a fly's wing beats- eventually causing a server halfway around the world to crash"

    Along these lines: There are great books on "The Physics of", like "The Physics of Startrek," "The Physics of the X-Files," and "The Physics of Starwars" (although the Starwars book should probably be an economics book >:)

  • My favorite sci-fi movie calculation... (Score:5, Informative)

    by cr0z01d ( 670262 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @08:50AM (#8958245)
    I only saw previews for The Core, but I gathered that the core of the Earth had stopped spinning, and the good guys had to restart it with nukes.

    Recall moment of inertia for a sphere, I = 2/5 mr^2. The mass of the Earth's core is 1.932e+24 kg, the radius, 3.488e+6 m. This gives a moment of 9.402e+36 kg m^2. The period of the core's rotation (one sidereal day) is 8.616e+3 s, giving [E= 1/2 Iw^2] rotational kinetic energy of 2.500e+28 J. Note that SI prefixes only go up to 10^24 (unless I'm mistaken).

    Now, how many nukes would have to be used to supply this energy? One kiloton TNT is 4.184e+12 J, giving the Earth's core kinetic energy of 5.975e+15 kilotons TNT. Were we to actually use TNT, the diameter of the dynamite required would be 953 kilometers and surface gravity would be 4.5% that of Earth. But I digress.

    So, back to nukes, the highest yield nuclear weapon that the US has ever produced (I think) is the triple-stage Mk-41, with up to 25 megatons TNT of explosive yield. 2.4e+11 of these would be required to provide sufficient energy to start the core's motion. To put this in perspective, each Mk-41 being 3.4 m long, the nuclear bombs required would span the average distance between the Earth and the sun five and a half times. (Hey, a lever! Never mind that the outside edge of this ridiculous construction would be moving at .3c.)

    For the Star Trek crowd, the amount of antimatter required is half of [E=mc^2] 2.781e+11 kg. The amount of energy is the same amount that the sun releases [our nice big 4e+26 W bulb] in about an hour. Enough energy to boil all the oceans almost thirty million times over. I knew that the movie premise was absurd, but I had no idea how many orders of magnitude the absurdity was.

    I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out such trivia as "Where the hell did the law of conservation of angular momentum go?"

    Sources: http://www.strategic-air-command.com/weapons/nucle ar_bomb_chart.htm, CRC books, Wikipedia, and sites on the internet I forgot about =).
    • But if you used European Nukes, the Soviets had at least a 54 Megaton test device, and the package size works out to produce a lever of them not much more than 25 light minutes long. Without knowing what the proposed 71 Mt design they never really tested looked like, that's about the best we can do. African Nukes are limited to a relatively modest 0.5 to 2 Mt for the ones allegedly tested off the South African coast, so in this area, the European version clearly beats the African (vis-a-vis Swallows)
    • Perhaps it is a good thing we don't have enough nukes to change to rotation of the earth.

  • In Hollywood: (Score:4, Funny)

    by Molina the Bofh ( 99621 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @09:56AM (#8958561) Homepage
    - All car bumpers are extremely explosive

    - Regular people will get knocked out by a simple punch while a hero will only get mildly scratched after running away from 10 terrorists with machine guns

    - Time is relative. You can jump into an airplane or helicopter in free and still be able to not only reach the controls, but also turn it on and recover it

    - The most l33t hackers crack other computers using nice and friendly GUIs. So getting into a file really looks like entering a building.

  • Euphemism (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rick.C ( 626083 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @10:03AM (#8958586)
    "The Institute of Physics Web site you tried to reach is currently unavailable.

    Due to vital maintenance work, some Institute of Physics Web sites are temporarily unavailable."

    In physics, the Slashdot Effect is called "vital maintenance work".

    How quaint.

  • Which series presents a more probable model of time travel:
    Back to the Future or Terminator?
  • 1) They send through a gate some kind of probe and seconds after they activate it, they receive a signal that the probe sent through the space and they say the probe is at XXX light years.

    2) An Egyptian expert learns to speak old Egyptian in an afternoon..

  • Biggest gaffe for physics in Sci-Fi Films:

    Celestial explosions that go "Ka-Boom."

    License always trumps accuracy, starting with this ubiquitous device.

    • Firefly (Score:2, Interesting)

      by SnappingTurtle ( 688331 )
      One of the things that impressed me about the TV show "Firefly" was that when something in space blew up it didn't go "boom".

  • UCF's course.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Planetes ( 6649 )
    This course started a couple years ago.. It's a 1000 level course which is freshman level. I've met a few people that took it although most of them are film types. Most engineering majors and physics majors at UCF don't bother because it's virtually useless for our degree requirements.

    Here's an article [ucffuture.com]from our student newspaper from the fall 2002 semester.

    Strangely, the course number listed in the article is for physical science. I don't know off hand what the real number is. Here's the O-P page [ucf.edu]f

  • Mention the stupid Space Station in Armageddon (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I thought Armageddon was a pretty good movie up to the point where they took off from earth.

    And then it turned to crap.

    But of everything that happened after that, the worst, in my opinion, was when they docked with the Space Station to refuel.

    Apparently, the director had been told that if you spin the Station, it will create a psuedo-gravity, so you can save money on weightlessness effects.

    Unfortunately, that's all the director knew, because everything else about the Space Station scene displays a total

  • Armageddon made me physically ill (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ArmorFiend ( 151674 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @11:31AM (#8959052) Homepage Journal
    Were there any physics in that were even kinda correct? I seem to recall the space shuttles bobing and weaving like airplanes through a meteor shower. Uh, there's no AIR in outer space, guys, thus flying with your big engines pointed back makes you go faster and faster and FasterAndFASTER until you die, and you can't use your wings as control surfaces to turn.

    Ah, and when they were stressfully docking with the spinning(!) "mir", there's this shot where you see the docking hatch extend, and its like the shuttle is "orbiting" mir, even before they make contact.

    I'm pretty sure most big meteors aren't shaped like they're designed by an evil asteroid designing picasso. Yep, I'm pretty sure they're usually just oblong balls.

    I'm pretty sure that meteor swarms that have travelled cosmic distances aren't constantly having sub meteors bang into eachother like bumpercars. They got all that out of their system 10,000 years ago.

    The people that made this movie should be hunted down and shot by their highschool physics instructor.

  • Hollywood Physics (Score:3, Funny)

    by BitwizeGHC ( 145393 ) on Saturday April 24, 2004 @11:37AM (#8959101) Homepage
    People learning physics better from movies is exactly who most people think they can leap through a plate glass window from an exploding car, submachineguns blazing with no apparent need to reload, ever.

    Physics lessons from Hollywood is like, the exact opposite of what we need.
  • Why then is there always sound in space movies?
    Why is there no delay for sounds that are far away,
    Distant explosions screwed up, i.e an explosion far away and the light and sound alway arrive at the same time!

    [ Sig mantra: Always perviwe befroe postng ]

  • The Italian Job (spoiler) (Score:3, Informative)

    by menscher ( 597856 ) <menscher+slashdot@u i u c . e du> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:38PM (#8960136) Homepage Journal
    In the opening scenes, they have a safe drop through several floors and land in a boat. Now, I have an interest in security, and I know that safes weigh a lot. Falling several stories down, even if slowed by an impact with each floor, would give that thing enough penetrating power to punch right through any boat. So when I saw the boat speeding off with the safe in the back, I started laughing and telling the person next to me how stupid that was.

    Oh, and yes, IAAP (I Am A Physicist), so really obvious physics stupidities jump out at me. Like sound effects in space....

    • Just a note for all the idiots responding to this post: yes, I did watch the next scene. I was giving this as an example of how physics actually played into a storyline, and how if the average grunt sitting around guarding a safe knew more physics, the movie would have ended in the first scene.

      I will admit that when watching it I was indeed "fooled". While I didn't believe for an instant that a safe could realistically fall and not crash through a boat, I was honestly fooled into believing that the dire

  • F=ma (Score:3, Funny)

    by scubacuda ( 411898 ) <scubacuda@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Saturday April 24, 2004 @02:45PM (#8960173)
    Everything I currently know about F=ma I learned from watching Roadrunner cartoons.

  • Why is this news? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jondo ( 693238 )
    This is just like "Math in art", or "History of calculus" courses that fulfil math requirements.

    They're still bloody arts courses.
  • I'm sure this sort of class isn't WORTHLESS, especially for people who wouldn't learn anything from a more technical science class, or a physics student just looking for a few laughs. I just hope it doesn't satisfy the baccalaureate core requirements at that school.

    Film students should be required to take classes like this. THAT would make it really meaningful.

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