Physics in the Movies

nucal writes "Here's a site rating Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics. A really thorough site with a rating system which ranges from GP (Good Physics) to XP (Obviously physics from an unknown universe)." My vote goes to the helix of M&M's.

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[freeBill]

...the scientific prowess of nerds. But they do amply demonstrate nerds' legendary lack of social skills. And Timothy is out there leading the pack with that old canard about the helix of M&Ms.

What he assumes (despite considerable evidence to the contrary) is that the entire ship was in weightlessness. In fact, as clearly shown in Mission to Mars, the only part of the ship which had very low gravity (allowing the M&M trick to be possible) was the central axis.

Since even the central axis was rotating, any zero-g DNA model not only COULD be rotating, it would HAVE TO BE rotating. Now, admittedly it did not look like this model was oriented along the axis of the ship. But there was nothing in the scene which would have precluded such an orientation.