Which movies and TV shows have the best representation of science and math?

[Danger]

James P. Hogan being my new favourite author (along with old standby Niven), I'd love to see some of his novels filmed. 'Code of the Lifemaker' is a brilliant and humourous study of robotic evolution, the 'Giants' series is very good, and 'The Proteus Operation' is a brilliant mix of history and science.

 

[ek]

Cube is one of my favourite movies of any genre.

 

[Francis M]

THanks LURCH that's the one I was thinking about.

Danger and others that mentioned this idea: I'm on the fence about them making a Niven or Purnelle book (just to mention a couple) into a movie or miniseries. THough I'd love to see something like "Ringworld" or "Footfall" or "The Mote in Gods Eye" adapted to screen I'm hesitent because I'm worried that it wouldn't be done well. Examples that immediatly spring to mind are Frank Herbert's "Dune", Stephen King's "THe Running Man". Both great stories, but movie wise they stank. The movie Dune left a lot of important elements out even though it was long, while the miniseries had all the important parts in (and was more understandable) didn't come across as well visually. "The Running Man" movie was just horribly 'Hollywooded up" and had no connection to the original story except the title.

THat's what I'm worried might happen with these other great books/stories that have been mentioned. They'll get to caught up in the f/x that seem to rule movies these days (Starship Troopers anybody?).

 

[BobG]

The Dish (Never heard of this one, so I looked it up):

Australia's involvement with the 1969 Apollo moon mission arrived with an unexpected wallop when its radio telescope in rural Parkes was elevated fron the Southern Hemishpere's backup broadcaster to primary broadcaster of Neil Armstrong's "one giant leap for mankind'. It is a modern wonder that the ten-year-old multibillion-dollar program became solely reliant on an untested crew based in a sheep paddock to capture this priceless moment in history."

DVD & Video Guide, Martin & Porter, 2004

Here's an interesting challenge for you folks that liked the movie, "The Dish".

The element sets for Apollo 11 are written on the left side of the blackboard, except for Mean Anomaly. You have to wait for a shot of the upper right hand side of the blackboard to get that (and it is the Mean Anomaly for the epoch time listed on the left - don't get confused by the drawing).

Calculate the look angles for 19 Jul 1967 at 02:37:00 UST, then check your calculations against acquisition later in the movie. For bonus points, calculate your look angles using a slide rule, like Glenn did.

They don't show the acquisition elevation in the movie, but the antenna is so big (210 feet across) that it can't reach an elevation of less than about 29.6 degrees, in spite of the antenna tower reaching 90 feet above the ground. With an off-axis receiver mounted on the antenna and the antenna rotated just so, you can pick up an object about 1.4 degrees from the main beam. (In other words, don't think your calculations are wrong just because you get such a high elevation).

If you treat it strictly as a two-body problem, your calculations should match the movie exactly. And Glenn's a whiner - it only takes a couple hours by hand, and only that long if you're prudent enough to do some double checks along the way. The azimuth of the Moon is even correct (although it was a quarter moon on that date, not a full moon).

If you want to get picky, the azimuth in the movie can't be exactly correct since there's been no accounting for precession/nutation, nor orbital perturbations ... and the orbital perturbations by then should be severe. Apollo 11 is just hours away from crossing over to the region where the Moon's gravitational attraction is stronger than Earth's. Still, Apollo 11 is so far away that the two-body look angles would still be within a couple degrees at worst - definitely close enough to find Apollo 11.

Even without accounting for precession, perturbations, etc, that seemed like a lot of detail work for a completely fictitious anomaly (although I don't know what they were doing with that "parrallax" stuff - they didn't even spell it right).

 

[glondor]

One of the funnest sci type movies imho is the fifth element. The flying cars are cool the plot is ok and leeloo is hot.

The worst sci type has to be The core. From a science point of view,, everything is wrong about this one.

 

[Math Jeans]

I love Numb3rs . It's not on TV here, so I've been downloading it.

Thats a good show. I watch every new episode. I also enjoy writing down the methods that Charlie uses, and googling them later.