Do Movies Misrepresent Science as Fact?

[ank_gl]

yes that's what i liked about that game. plot is very realistic. no physics banging theory(but halo2 has some, like chief jumping with the bomb on to the covanent mothership and planting it over there and blowing it all up and landing successfully on In Amber Clad(its the ship name, like Pillar of Autumn in halo 1)). only spartan can do the unusual stuff, but that stuff is thoroughly explained in previous novels.
geez.. i am starting to sound like a geek!

 

[ank_gl]

and the spawn levels were just so much blazing gun fun. they're everywhere!

i just love killing the flood

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

i just love killing the flood

Ah that's it the flood, I remember now, probably set the game above the mould because, when you got out of their alive you were genuinely breathing hard Sheez! I think I broke the fire button or my fingers gone numb one of the two.

Embrace your geekhood, at least you're not a train spotter

 

[ank_gl]

Embrace your geekhood, at least you're not a train spotter

whats a train spotter

 

[Danger]

whats a train spotter

I don't know, but it certainly derailed this thread.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

whats a train spotter

Pasty fellows with flasks of weak lemon drink or tea, who spend their weekends standing on train platforms across the country trying to spot certain, as they see it, notable trains, like the 3576473 from Bristol to Barnstable, noting them in their books. Sometimes found in groups murmuring wistfully about past glories, like the time they saw the 37726F nr Carlisle better known as the Flying Scotsman.

Uber Geeks.

 

[ank_gl]

i pretty much guessed it, wasnt sure but

 

[daniel_i_l]

I hope you've read this to add to your collection of movie physics mistakes. :)

http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1167

Zz.

That paper sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory or something.

 

[ank_gl]

conspiracy is against some sort of fact or truth.
that paper is against the dumbness of movies.

 

[makc]

the conspiracy of movie makers to turn their consumers into idiots.

 

[daniel_i_l]

conspiracy is against some sort of fact or truth.
that paper is against the dumbness of movies.

Yes, I was just referring to the way it was written - with all the attention to small and insignificant (from the viewers perspective) details.

 

[ank_gl]

well sometimes they are insignificant(like that green goblin one) but sometime they huge, like superman making time go backward and cars flying over a gap

 

[jostpuur]

I found it particularly annoying when spider man did some backflips, and he didn't even pull his knees close to his chest when he accelerated his rotation. It was so obvious that the angular momentum was not conserving. If he had so strong legs, that he could jump higher than ordinary humans, then he could do that. If he had so strong and sticky hair in his palms, that he could climb a brick wall, then he could do that also. But nothing should enable him to violate conservation of the angular momentum.

Annoying how people don't see the difference. Perhaps there could be some courses of "intuitive physics" in high school? For example they could watch movies and get points for finding mistakes!

That paper sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory or something.

Indeed! That was so crackpottery against the mainstream movie physics!

 

[Chi Meson]

Annoying how people don't see the difference. Perhaps there could be some courses of "intuitive physics" in high school? For example they could watch movies and get points for finding mistakes!

I do that, and I know there are dozens, DOZENS of other physics teachers who use this "spot the mistake" technique to raise interest and awareness of physics.

Unfortunately, "dozens" should be "thousands."

 

[ank_gl]

i got this one from the back of my head. this irritates me more than anything else.
in the end of movie "flight of the pheonix", they put up windscreens all over the wingspan and fly. won't those screens act as spoilers?? its just so much ridiculous.

 

[Danger]

I'm always annoyed by a clone instantly aging to the same as its 'parent', then stopping. Also by it thinking that it's the original.

 

[SpitfireAce]

"I'm always annoyed by a clone instantly aging to the same as its 'parent'"
I think that actually makes sense.. it is believed that the wearing away of telemers (on the ends of DNA strands) is responsible for aging. When one extracts the DNA from the parent to insert into the gamete, the telemeres come too. This defect is replicated and the clone ends up having the same genetic wear and tear as the parent. This is why Dolly the sheep lived for a very short time.

 

[mgb_phys]

I'm always annoyed by a clone instantly aging to the same as its 'parent', then stopping

It saves a lot of money in actors.

 

[Danger]

I think that actually makes sense.. it is believed that the wearing away of telemers (on the ends of DNA strands) is responsible for aging. When one extracts the DNA from the parent to insert into the gamete, the telemeres come too.

I'm not talking about 'wear and tear'; I mean the notion that a clone grows from gamete to 35-year-old person in a few minutes, and has all of the memories of the original. Would you want to be buying the groceries for something with that sort of growth pattern?

 

[gabee]

I was browsing through some movie channels on TV, and there was this movie called "Ice Princess" where Michelle Trachtenberg's character was talking about the physics of ice skating and said "tucking in your arms will increase your moment of inertia and make you spin faster"

If they're going to go to all the trouble of including physics talk on the conservation of angular momentum in a movie, atleast make it right?

I saw that exact same thing the other day!

 

[SpitfireAce]

well the real explanation is kind of long (pulling your arms straight in along the radius involves creating an applied force to counteract the carolios force so you're pushing off/doing work and increasing your KE), but they could have at least said decreased your moment of inertia since they apparently looked up the term moment of inertia

How about the movie "the core" where there were air bubbles in magma close to the center of the earth, or how they used 1 or 2 "well positioned" nuclear devices to start the core spinning

any body know of any good sci-fi movies that involve complex topics but actually do a good job with the science...
im going to say Jurassic Park

 

[ank_gl]

any body know of any good sci-fi movies that involve complex topics but actually do a good job with the science...

million dollar$$$$$ question

 

[ank_gl]

http://www.scifi-movies.com/english/classement/movies.htm
search through these and find out yourself that there is nothing called "good sci-fi movies that involve complex topics but actually do a good job with the science..."

 

[ank_gl]

aaaaah I,ROBOT, robot torso changing color to red, when gone bad was soooooooooo funny

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

million dollar$$$$$ question

I'd say given that Cube 2ypercube deals with a tessaractal prison that shifts and rearranges itself in 4 dimensions, that it does a remarkably good job of explaining 4 dimensional maths and physics to an audience that is at least at a visual level unable to grasp the implications.

 

[ank_gl]

I'd say given that Cube 2ypercube deals with a tessaractal prison, that it does a remarkably good job of explaining 4 dimensional maths to an audience that is at least at a visual level unable to grasp the implications.

all that stuff went over my head

 

[SpitfireAce]

me too, I am not sure which one I watched, but I recall the "hypercube" had one room that shifted periodically, why is that a 4 dimensional figure?

 

[Danger]

Never saw any Cubes or Cores, or the like. I do think that my second favourite movie, which is the only SF film in history to earn a Best Actor Oscar, presented the scientific aspect nicely: 'Charly'.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

all that stuff went over my head

Tesarract is a 4d cube, in the movie their trapped in one that not only shifts in space but in time too. The fact that it's quite a complicated idea and that it is explained well by the resident mathemeticians and physics buffs who happen to have been detained in it is remarkable really.

http://www.mathematik.com/4DCube/4DCubePovray.html

Here's what a tesarract would look like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_2:_Hypercube

Here's an overview of the film, contains spoilers.

me too, I am not sure which one I watched, but I recall the "hypercube" had one room that shifted periodically, why is that a 4 dimensional figure?

The idea was not just 4D as in v,x,y,z but also in terms of x,y,z,t ie time and space itself was being moved this time as well as the cube itself. So you could meet older and younger versions of themselves at various points in the film, and in fact they did. One room but it could move through itself by the spatial nature of itself and you could move into rooms at different periods in time.

 

[Danger]

the "hypercube" had one room that shifted periodically

Sorry, Spitfire... I'm not laughing at you. This just reminded me of a short story in one of my 'Best SF of (whatever year)' anthologies. I think that it might have been called 'There Was a Crooked House'. I can't remember the exact details, but this guy built his house under a freeway clover-leaf that was constructed as a Mobius strip. An earthquake occurred, and the whole thing folded up, trapping him in the 5th dimension.