Bad Movie Physics Hurt Scientific Understanding 910
eldavojohn writes "A paper published by UCF researchers claims that bad movie physics hurt students' understanding of real world physics. From the article, "Some people really do believe a bus traveling 70 mph can clear a 50-foot gap in a freeway, as depicted in the movie Speed." The professors published this paper out of fear that society will pay the price. One of the authors commented on advancements in the past years "All the luxuries we have today, the modern conveniences, are a result of the science research that went on in the '60s during the space race. It didn't just happen. It took people doing hard science to do it." I commented on the physics of the most recent Die Hard having problems detracting from my enjoyment of the movie but is it really the root of a growing problem of poor science & math among students?"
Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics (Score:5, Informative)
Die Hard has died (Score:3, Informative)
Spoilers included, so ROT13, use this to read [mozilla.org].
Gur vaqrfgehpgnoyr nfvna tvey trgf uvg ol n gehpx naq fgvyy svtugf yvxr abguvat unccrarq. N pne vf ynhapurq ng n uryvpbcgre naq fhpprffshyyl gnxrf vg qbja. Gur S35 be jungrire wrg syvrf orgjrra oevqtrf naq ohvyqvatf naq cbjreyvarf, ybbxf BX, ohg unf abguvat gb qb jvgu Qvr Uneq. Wbua ZpPynar vf fhccbfrq gb or guvf beqvanel pbc jub fnirf gur qnl, ohg vafgrnq ur vf fbzr fbeg bs n fhcrezna, whzcf bhg bs n pne ng bire 100xz/u naq whfg jnyxf njnl sebz vg, ohg trgf orng hc ol gung nfvna ynql cerggl jryy. Gur FGHCVQ fprar jurer fbzr angheny tnf yvar vf qviregrq gb n cbjre-cynag naq whfg oybjf hc rirelguvat, V qba'g trg vg. Xriva Fzvgu nf guvf Jneybpx unpxre fhpxrq. Jnf vg uvf jrg-qernz gb nccrne va gur fnzr zbivr jvgu Jvyyvf? Gur ivyynva fhpxrq. Ur vf oyrnx naq whfg ab pbzcnevfba gb Wrerzl Vebaf sebz gur ynfg zbivr. Gur cybg fhpxrq. Gur onq thl pna qb cerggl zhpu nalguvat sebz uvf pbzchgre. Fgbc na ryringbe va fbzr cevingr ohvyqvat? Fher jul abg. Unpx vagb rirelguvat, pbageby nalguvat (nyy gur fgerrg yvtugf, fgbpx znexrgf, cbjre cynagf.) Jungrire. Jul gur uryy vf cbjrecynag pbageby vf npprffvoyr sebz gur Jro naljnl? Gur jubyr zbivr vf oebxra vagb whfg 3 be 4 ybat ynfgvat fprarf ernyyl. Vg unq ab cnpr. ZpPynar sylvat n uryvpbcgre sbe gur svefg gvzr va uvf yvsr naq orvat noyr gb qb vg juvyr gur cbjre vf qbja ba gur ragver pbfg. Fubbgvat gur onq thl guebhtu uvf fubhyqre, bx. Naljnl, Jvyyvf vf byq naq va guvf zbivr vg fubjf. Pna'g gurl unir fbzr arj npgbef?
As to the students thinking of science as hard, I don't think the movies are responsible for this. Being smart is apparently not cool anymore, why should it be? You can make much more dough selling SCO Linux subscriptions
Re:Not yet? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Problem statement: A point particle moving at 70 MPH at some angle must cross a 50 foot gap, and be at the same height when it reaches the other side.
Given:
v0 = 70 mph
x = 50 feet
Assumption: Force-free motion
Constant gravity ( g = 9.81 m/s^2 )
Solution:
v0 = 70 mph = 31.2928 m/s
x = 50 feet = 15.24 m
t = Time of flight
theta = Angle from horizon
x = v0*t*cos(theta)
y = v0*sin(theta)*t - g*t^2
Solve for t t = x/(v0*cos(theta))
Substitude into y equation
y = x*v0/v0*sin(theta)/cos(theta) - g*x^2/v0^2/cos(theta)^2
Set y = 0 and solve
x*sin(theta)/cos(theta) = g*x^2/v0^2/cos(theta)^2
sin(theta)*cos(theta) = g*x/v0^2
g*x/v0^2 = 9.81*15.24/(31.2928)^2 = 0.15267
sin(theta)*cos(theta) = 0.15267 can be solve graphically. The first valid solution is 8.89 degrees.
So yes, a bus (with no friction) can cross a 50 feet gap, if the ramp was at an incline greater than 8.89 degrees.
Yay.
70 mph to clear a 50 foot gap (Score:2, Informative)
Hey prof, refine you understanding of physics and teaching skills, instead of whining about Hollywood movies on a German junk journal. We all whine about Hollywood movies, but get real, when is the last time that somebody offered you a job in real life to crack 1280 bit encryption in 30 seconds while your sensitive organ is being sucked.
Re:Idiots (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sound in space (Score:1, Informative)
I like how people complain about that bus jump. (Score:4, Informative)
They actually did that bus jump. It's real. And, no, they didn't edit out any ramps.
They had to used CGI to edit the landing area shorter, to make it look like it landed closer to the edge than it actually did, because the bus actually jumped farther than it should have. (And they edited out the camera rig it smashed into.)
How? The gap is not level. Yes, it looks that way on film from certain angles if you're not paying attention, but the starting end was a several yards higher than the back end. Everyone sits there and complains about how a bus cannot do a level jump, and fails to notice that it's not a level jump.
About the only physics that stunt played fast and lose with was by weighing down the back somewhat so the bus wouldn't rotate forward, and, thus, still be movable after landing.
Movie physics, game physics, and reality (Score:5, Informative)
I used to do animation tools for physically based animation [animats.com], and got some idea of the Hollywood view of dynamics.
A basic concept in filmmaking is that the endpoint of a motion is predetermined. Directors think in terms of "here, then here, then there". The path desired is quite likely to be physically unrealistic, and may have to be pieced together from several shots.
A real physics simulator just isn't "directable" enough. What's used in practice is a combination of hand animation, piecing together motion capture, a collection of clever tricks to make real-world objects go where you want them, and lots of cuts to hide discontinuities. The MTV-style "one cut per second" approach to action scenes makes it even easier.
Much the same thing happens in games, except that you have to allow a user with limited control to drive a character with too many degrees of freedom and not enough embedded smarts to manage movement against real-world physics. This is why, in most sports games, you see beautiful motion-captured motion interspersed with strange jerks as motions are blended in ways that are continuous but nonphysical.
In most driving games, the physics is totally unrealistic. The wheel adhesion is huge, the CG is very low (often below the ground) and it's very common to lock roll rate once the vehicle is tilted beyond recovery angle, so that the vehicle rolls all the way over and lands upright. Driving a full sized car through a remote joystick works badly (we tried this with our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle once, then immediately bought a MoMo steering wheel and interfaced it) and game controller joysticks are even worse. So the vehicle model has to be incredibly forgiving.
There is a classic of computational Hollywood physics worth noting. In the Bond movie, "The Man with the Golden Gun" (1974), a car is driven over a ruined arch bridge at high speed, executes a 360 degree roll, and lands on the far side. It really did do that. The dynamics were calculated by the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory (now CALSPAN) and the ramp was constructed to make it happen consistently if the vehicle was driven at the correct speed. But there's a cheat there, too. The car had a fifth, solid wheel underneath which hit a rail on the launch ramp to initiate the roll. It wasn't possible to induce enough roll rate fast enough through the vehicle suspension.
Re:Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics (Score:3, Informative)
And his section on silenced guns is wrong. Subsonic 7.62mm ammo exists that won't make a sonic boom, and despite his hand-waving about how it's only theoretical and not better than pistol rounds, it is used in the real world. He does not seem to do any fact-finding before doing his math. I have heard in person a silenced Mac-11 firing 9mm subsonic, and it did indeed make only a "pfft" sound and a mechanical cycling sound.
Example of subsonic 7.62mm here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=socgmULGVOA [youtube.com]
Re:Speed calculation (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Idiots (Score:3, Informative)
Democritus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democritus [wikipedia.org]
100 years ago they didn't think you could change one to another, or split or fuse them to gain energy
On this, you're actually being conservative. There were prominent physicists as late as the mid 1930's who didn't think there was any way to actually get a net gain of energy from nuclear reactions, and they included people who had specifically researched Uranium. Until the curve of binding energy became well known among them, most would have bet a week's pay that there was no possible natural radioactive compound that would exist in enough quantities to refine and could still be induced to give up that many neutrons.
Re:Watching movies is not physics homework... (Score:3, Informative)
But should entertainment be educational? Do you remember a summer blockbuster that was educational? Well, I remember learning a bunch of dinosaur names (which then I promptly forgot) on Jurassic Park. And I didn't know anything about the Titanic other than it sank, so I guess that one could count as historical.
And then there are movies so atrocious that you could become dumber watching them, such as Godzilla.
Re:I like how people complain about that bus jump. (Score:5, Informative)
According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], you don't know what you're talking about:
One of the most famous scenes in the film shows the bus jumping across a gap in an elevated freeway-to-freeway ramp while still under construction. Both sides of the gap are at identical heights, making it impossible that the jump would work in real life. According to the "Making of..." feature that accompanied the DVD release, the stunt used a ramp and really did traverse fifty feet in the air. To handle the sudden jolt on landing, the stunt bus had no passengers aboard and the driver was wearing a shock-absorbing harness.
The gap in the highway was added through CGI; note the flock of digital seagulls added by the special effects company to enhance the realism of the scene. While the flyover ramp is shown to be essentially all complete and paved, except for the gap, in actual construction that gap in the road deck would have been fixed before the guardrail and asphalt is added. You may also note if you look closely, when the bus is flying over the bridge that is under construction the gap between the two bridges was edited in.
You should really write the authors of that paper though, I think they'd get a kick out of your comments and they'd love to add you as a data point.
Re:Hollywood Porn Biology Hurts Sexual Understandi (Score:2, Informative)
I have met more women who think these items are true and therefore try to emulate the movies. And as each year a new batch of 18 year olds come along, more and more of this becomes true. Definitely not all of it.
Well, let's correct my statement. Numbers 7 and 8 a number of women do as they believe it heightens the experience for a guy. 15 appears to be true for those really into receiving analingus, they try to make it more appealing for their partner. 16 has been true as long as you judge the woman correctly, some like a light pat, while others want a hard smack. 21 seems to be more true each year. On number 20, I will only say that more people are trying this and seem to like it depending on the situation and location.
I have many female friends from all walks of life. I also work in a female oriented "adult novelty" store, commonly referred to as an adult toy store. I have openly discussed sex with females since I was fifteen, I am now thirty. People have always been able to open up to me. Using a margin of lying of 50%, I still see an increase in at least the items I mentioned.
Now your experience may vary, but porn has definitely led into the acceptance of some of these behaviors. Oh and in relation to 19, a few of my friends is like that in certain situations. At least after a group leave a bar together, if one of their friends goes down on their husband/boyfriend, they typically will join in. If they had tried to hide it then she would have starting beating both of them. Plus I have a friends who have left their husbands/boyfriends due to them trying to get a threeway by getting caught with another woman.
Re:Intuitor Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics (Score:4, Informative)
Hand held laser are a very real possibility and can do fairly high damage to dark targets with portable energy supplies. They'd function much like the "flashlights" in niven's known space books. With all the resultant limitations as well.
Re:I like how people complain about that bus jump. (Score:3, Informative)
The bus travels at 70 mph (v = 31.2928 m/s) with acceleration due to gravity equal to 9.80665 ms^-2. We assume that the other side of the jump is h metres lower than where the bus left off (to start with, lets make h = 0 m). The bus leaves at an angle of theta relative to the plane perpendicular to gravity, i.e. 0 means it leaves of completely flat. For maximum effect, let theta be 35.26 degrees.
The bus will traval v * cos(theta) * sqrt(2/g * (v * sin(theta) - h)) metres before landing. This comes out at 49.04566 m, or 160.9 feet.
Re:Watching movies is not physics homework... (Score:3, Informative)
That's part of the problem - people assume movies that are based on real stories are factually accurate - and so base their "understanding" of history on what's depicted in the movie; not from actually studying the event.
Re:Watching movies is not physics homework... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Watching movies is not physics homework... (Score:2, Informative)
The infinite possibilities each day holds should stagger the mind. The sheer number of experiences I could have is uncountable, breathtaking, and I'm sitting here refreshing my inbox. We live trapped in loops, reliving a few days over and over, and we envision only a handful of paths laid out ahead of us. We see the same things each day, we respond the same way, we think the same thoughts, each day a slight variation on the last, every moment smoothly following the gentle curves of societal norms. We act like if we just get through today, tomorrow our dreams will come back to us.
And no, I don't have all the answers. I don't know how to jolt myself into seeing what each moment could become. But I do know one thing: the solution doesn't involve watering down my every little idea and creative impulse for the sake of someday easing my fit into a mold. It doesn't involve constantly holding back for fear of shaking things up.
This is very important, so I want to say it as clearly as I can: Fuck. That. Shit.
Re:Watching movies is not physics homework... (Score:3, Informative)
also the bit about the glowing eyes was explained via a radioactive mineral being in the "snakes" bodies. Very little about the show was explained as being "magic".
Most of the time Dr jackson did mention in passing the where part of the names.
Re:Sound (Score:3, Informative)
It's interesting to note that guns work fine underwater as well, although in that case they would not cycle correctly as the viscosity of the water prevents the parts of the action from moving at the right speed.
Re:Where to Begin With the Problems? (Score:3, Informative)
The lift (due to pressure differences etc) needs a reaction force (required by Newton). You can't have one without the other. You can calculate the lift of a wing using lift coefficients, air density, velocity etc and lo and behold that force will be balanced by the mass x acceleration of the downward airflow. You can't have one without the other - the lift has to "push" against something.
You can't claim that significant amounts of air aren't directed downwards behind wings. Have you seen wingtip vortices in cloud? Could a helicopter hover without a downdraft? The wingtips vortices have an overall downward movement - planes can't fly without them.
http://www.av8n.com/irro/profilo1_e.html [av8n.com]
http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html#sec-cir
http://amasci.com/wing/whyhard.html [amasci.com]
http://www.diam.unige.it/~irro/gallery.html [unige.it]
There is no one single effect that causes a wing to produce lift - it is a combination of interrelated effects:
http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html#sec-con