Pentagon Wants Screenplays From Scientists

Aix writes "According to the New York Times, the Pentagon is funding classes in screenplay writing for 15 scientists. The idea is to encourage kids to go into science and engineering through mainstream media and thereby presumably bolster long-term US national security. While it sounds like a lot of fun for the researchers involved, and anything that stems the spiral of the US into a culture of anti-intellectualism is a good thing in my book. Will glamorizing science in the movies make kids pay better attention in chemistry class?"

Comments

Movie Physics website

[HonkyLips]

They could do worse than begin by visitng this site: http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/ which examines physics in Hollywood movies. The reviews alone are priceless.

Re:Movie Physics website

[Kelson]

And don't forget http://badastronomy.com/

Re:Movie Physics website

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Nope, not gonna happen. The Mythbusters tried it out with a crane, a crash test dummy equipped with a accelerometer and using a hammer to "break the surface tension". There was no effect whatsoever. The dummy was toast, hammer or no hammer.

Pefect script

[alvinrod]

Camera pans to show children playing with various toys. Billy is sitting on the side by himself playing with his chemistry set. The more popular kids are playing with a football. Suddenly ten hot women come out of no where and surround Billy, cooing over him.

Suddenly something in one of the tubes starts fizzling. Suddenly the President comes into view and hands Billy a big bag of money and says, "By God Billy, you've found a cure for cancer!" Everyone starts cheering.

All the kids playing with non-science related toys get fat, ugly, and contract AIDs on the spot. They all fall over dead and no one seems to care about them. Billy is given a parade in his honor.

Roll credits.

A little extreme perhaps but I think if we made science look "cool" to little kids they'd probably buy it. If I would've seen this when I were little I'd probably have become a chemist.

Re:Clue stick. Re:Well, an anti-intellectual is...

[nunchux]

Bush has never endorsed the teaching of Intelligent Design as a science rather than religion. That's simply a fabrication intended to karma bait the Bush haters. Congratulations on your success -- but you are still a troll.

Actually...

"Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/02/AR2005080201686.html

Re:glamorous

[Kelson]

Ah, yes, the CSI Effect, by which laymen have come to expect instant miracles from forensics instead of a long, slow process of detection.

Re:not even close

[sensei moreh]

Samuel Wright Bodman was sworn in as the 11th Secretary of Energy on February 1, 2005 ... Born in 1938 in Chicago, he graduated in 1961 with a B.S. in chemical engineering from Cornell University. In 1965, he completed his ScD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the next six years he served as an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT ... IANAE, but I walways thought that a CE was an engineer

Not breaking the surface tension - aeration

[snowwrestler]

I'm a whitewater kayaker and so know a little something about hitting the water at high speed (off a waterfall). For drops above 20 feet, boaters focus on penetrating the water with the bow of the boat so as to break surface tension. Above about 40 feet, that is no longer enough, and the boater needs to aim for the area of maximum aeration. Well-aerated water has a very low surface tension and so is safer to hit at high speeds. Waterfalls have been run over 100 feet without injury this way.

So the shotgun would have a very different effect from a hammer in that it is more likely to aerate the water. Not that it would work anyway (air hurts at 150 mph, let alone water), but it important to understand the principle at work.