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?"
Speed calculation (Score:1, Interesting)
0.5 * g * ((0.487012987 s)^2) = 1.16297871 meters
So as long as the receiving end of the freeway happens to be 1.16 m lower than the departing end, YOU'RE OK!
Coyote and Roadrunner; Pixar (Score:5, Interesting)
I teach physics at a community college, and I actually like to use Coyote and Roadrunner as an illustration of people's Aristotelian preconceptions. When the coyote steps off a cliff, he has to stop moving forward before he can look down and go, "oh, time to fall." This is exactly what Aristotle said had to happen: an object could be doing forced motion or natural motion, but it couldn't do both at the same time. One reason Aristotelianism was accepted for thousands of years was that it does a good job of codifying the incorrect expectations that people tend to have intuitively. If it wasn't for Coyote and Roadrunner, it would be harder for me to teach this!
My sister works at Pixar, and a lot of her work is physics simulations. (She's working on hair and cloth these days.) She says that a lot of the time, they try simulating the right physics first, but then that comes out not looking the way they want, e.g., water splashes realistically, but they want a cartoon splash, not a realistic splash. So they intentionally mung the equations to get the artistic effect they want. Well, why not? Picasso painted people with two eyes on the same side of their face.
The reason people in the US are ignorant about physics isn't because they see movies with incorrect physics in them, it's because K-12 science education in the US is a disaster.
Re:Idiots (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Acme School of Physics (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a lot about the universe our physicists don't understand yet. They can't even figure out how to get Quantum Theory and Relativistic Theory to agree. They don't even really understand how gravity works, and that's the most important force which affects us humans in our daily lives. There's now some evidence that there might be other dimensions besides the 4 we're familiar with, and various particles have been detected (like neutrinos) which previously were only hypothesized. Many people like to claim that lightspeed is a hard-and-fast limit, and that it's impossible to travel faster. 150 years ago people thought it was impossible to fly in a machine that was heavier than air. There's no telling what other facets about our universe exist which we are unable currently to observe and understand, just like we had no idea how to split or fuse atoms and create enormous amounts of energy 100 years ago.
Re:Coyote and Roadrunner; Pixar (Score:5, Interesting)
Two examples: on Star Trek TOS, they tried very hard to be scientifically correct (later versions were less careful) but wimped out when they depicted the Enterprise moving through space. They tried doing it without sound (no sound in a vacuum), but everybody complained that it "felt wrong". So we got the famous "whoosh" during the opening credits and a strange rumble when the ship orbited a planet..
In Babylon 5, they tried even harder. ("Conceptual Consultant" Harlan Ellison has many unendearing qualities, but he's always a stickler for scientific details.) So when spaceships docked, they had to pitch 180% so they could use their reaction engines to slow down. Perfectly good physics — but many casual viewers wondered why all the ships were flying backwards!
Re:Coyote and Roadrunner; Pixar (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I disagree with TFA (Score:5, Interesting)
Mythbusters is particularly bad about this, often things that they "test" you could just do on a piece of paper and see it is or is not going to work. Other times the design of the experiment is hugely flawed, often conceptually, and nobody talks about the elephant in the room (I could give you a bunch of examples -- one that comes to mind is the 'catching an arrow' episode which does not take into account anticipation of reaction or even moving the target backward). However I (as you can tell) still enjoy the show once in a while -- it is, to me, entertainment and kind of funny. I loved "Beyond 2000" as a kid (does anybody remember this?) and Mythbusters I think is by the same producers...
One of the things that would help all of what we outlined is a change in culture where discovery and true inquiry is advocated, asking well formulated / scientific questions is ok... To this degree, getting kids interested in answering questions empirically is a good thing. The Mythbusters occasionally visits true scientists at nearby NASA, etc., and attempts to learn very well and are respectful of what they learn, which is great IMHO. Kids / young adults will see this and want to be like the expert (hopefully!)
Re:Idiots (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't like the impossible flight thing because there clearly were things heavier than air that still flew- birds. But today there isn't anything comparable that goes FTL. But yeah, we don't know what we don't know.
Re:Idiots (Score:2, Interesting)
Who cares? (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, remember, "Da masses are as dumb as dumbasses". Nothing will change that, and portraying scientist types as (minor) heroes and not freaky rejects in the media will do much more for promoting science in America (and elsewhere) than checking to see that all media is totally accurate by the laws of the universe (snore). We're probably living in a simulation anyways.
By the way, science is not infallible: http://xkcd.com/298/ [xkcd.com]
Also, I'm not sure we need more scientists with their strange views. A biologist, a physicist and a mathematician were on a trip to Scotland. On their way out of the train, they see a lone black sheep standing on a grassy field. "The sheep in Scotland are black!", exclaims the biologist. "No, silly, at least one sheep in Scotland is black", retorted the physicist. The mathematician sighed, and after a brief pause, explained: "Both of you are wrong. At least one Scottish sheep is black on at least one side."
Re:the fi in sci-fi (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Idiots (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, I learned some serious physics in church, listening to discussions of Dirac's Bra-Ket notation and Feynman Diagrams, even though a lot of it was probably way over my head in third grade.
Movie Science Stops Terrorisim (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, both the Columbine killers and the recent London "bombers" had an entirely false belief that propane cooking cylinders would explode like grenades. In reality, the cylinders are purposefully designed to rupture without causing a fragmentary explosion.
The recent London "bombers" even seemed to believe that any car set alight would produce a large explosion. In truth, cars burn all the time, it is very, very rare for any road vehicle of any sort to explode. In fact, none of the London "bombers" schemes had any real potential of a large explosive effect.
For this, I think it's fair to say we can thank good old Movie Science. As long as ignorant villians keep believing what they see on TV, we'll be all the safer for it.
CSI Effect (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Follow the money (Score:3, Interesting)
Two Sides (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess there two sides to every conversation. When I watch a movie or TV show, I realize I'm supposed to suspend belief... When the bionic man reaches up and pulls an overturned car down to right it... he should catapult his arm into low earth orbit ripping it completely free from the soft meaty shoulder to which it's attached. Obviously this doesn't happen and Newton is ignored with extreme prejudice. When Van Helsing swings down and snatches the heroin up from a multi-story stunt (thanks to our good friend CGI) there is no profound trauma, no dislocated shoulders or broken ribs... only escape from the undead... the undead should be the hint (the only place you find the undead in the real world is D.C.)
So I think it's only fair to park your "Critical Thinking Brain" at the lobby door when you go to watch a movie... that said, you should remember to pick back up on the way out. For those of you who don't own one, this is why we're having this conversation in the first place... your job is to go out and get one.
People who can't tell that "Looney Toons" are not an accurate depictions of physics, should probably be forced to wear nurf suits, not be allowed to move faster than a brisk walk, and be prevented from procreation as a protection to the intellectual viability of our posterity. I'm sorry, no lack of legal knowlege will prevent you from falling off a cliff at 32 ft/sec.^2.
Along those lines, people who participate in projects like "Jack-Ass the Movie", or attempt to defy the fundamental laws of physics, only to become horrible lessons in absolute inevitability of those very laws, should be protected from their own stupidity. In fact we should all be protected from their stupidity. One more fine reason to elect a president and a legislative body with with a collective IQ larger than bowling ball's.
Of course, then you'll never get a chance to see "Jack-Ass the Nation", but I believe the up side merits the risk.
Re:Watching movies is not physics homework... (Score:3, Interesting)
Never understood that at all, maybe being English helps, but when I did
it at school my problem was understanding what the hell was so difficult
about it. When people asked me to translate a section into understandable
English I was baffled, it all made perfect sense already [some exceptions
of course]. Take away the language and a fair amount of the point goes away.
I thought http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117509/ [imdb.com] did a good job of leaving
the language in place but updating the setting.
Re:Watching movies is not physics homework... (Score:2, Interesting)
Depends on what you think "educational" is, I think. If you're thinking about "hard facts", well, that's difficult, because in order to know that you just got presented a fact, you already need to, well, know the fact. For example, in Stargate [imdb.com] the Goa'uld names are actual names of egyptian gods. Someone not interested in egyptian mythology might not know that and it doesn't matter for enjoying the movie. The names could have just made up by the authors. And someone who recognizes the names already has that knowledge.
OTOH, you have "soft facts" that one could have picked up from blockbusters. The opening scene in Saving Private Ryan [imdb.com] is a classic in that sense as it seems to reflect the reality at D-Day pretty accurate (according to veterans). You don't learn any hard facts from this scene, but you learn that a war/a battle is nothing funny. Instead it is a nightmare you'd avoid at all cost.
Compare that to the "clean and straight" war presented in 1970ish movies like Midway [imdb.com] and you clearly see a difference.
Other examples that come to mind (although I'm not sure if they qualify as blockbusters) are Rain Man [imdb.com] (explaining Autism [wikipedia.org] to a wider audience) or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [imdb.com] (denouncing common methods in asylums).
So, yes, entertainment and education is not necessarily an unsolvable conflict
Re:Watching movies is not physics homework... (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is not so direct. Physics students have a lot of pre-formed assumptions about how things work, which then influence how they learn the course material. Some of those assumptions are right, some are wrong, and the wrong ones can get in the way of learning. One part of what I do as a physics teacher is find and redirect these mis-understandings.
On the other hand, movie situations can also make for instructive problems, where the student figures out why the bus can't make that jump, and learns something from it.
If not for Star Trek... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Watching movies is not physics homework... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not just Shakespeare they're talking about here, it's fictional literature in general. And I agree wholeheartedly with them. Good fictional works are about the fundamental ideas and feelings that make us human.
I wish my teachers has told me that before they started on Shakespeare, with its archaic turn of phrase and out-dated spelling, the modern poetry, the ungrammatical and poorly spelled trendy modern prose, etc.
"Why are they teaching us this when the spelling isn't even right and the sentences don't even make sense," Is what I thought at age 12, and I resented English as a result.
My understanding was that it was all about spelling, grammar, writing reports and answering comprehension questions.
"They" didn't let the cat out of the bag for another four years. By that time, I'd exhausted the supply of Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams and had given up reading other than computer programming and science magazines and computer science text books.
Somewhere along the lines I went on a fruit break.
By the way, Shakespeare has "too many words" for me, but the English teachers (mrs Turgid included) seem to love it. As far as I can tell, his plays present a canned and comprehensive study of the major facets of the human condition, and that is their value. Some people derive pleasure from the way it's written. It just sounds like a lot of verbal diarrhea to me. I sat through Sean Bean's Macbeth once and came out feeling like my ears had been boxed and my brain was numb from all the words.
A Physics teacher chimes in... (Score:1, Interesting)
It's not all bad Physics though. Babylon 5 does a great job with demonstrating conservation of momentum with their fighters. Futurama has several scenes that also deal with momentum in an accurate way.
Anybody out there know of any other exceptionally good (or horrendously awful) examples? I'm always looking for more, and the kids can't get enough!