Slashdot Mirror
The Biology of B-Movie Monsters
Ant writes "The Biology of B-Movie Monsters is a published paper about the reality of movie-monster anatomy in 2003. In the paper, Michael C. LaBarbera explores the implications of extremely large and extremely small fantasy creatures, whose mass, volume and surface-area scale at different rates as they are shrunk/enlarged (e.g., ants can carry many times their body-weight, but if they were the size of tigers, they'd be crushed under their own carapaces). Other issues covered include the respiratory difficulties of Mothra, the biomechanics of Jurassic Park dinosaurs, and the reason E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial is so effing cute.."
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Oddly enough the CGI snakes in Snakes on a Plane also look out of place and unnatural yet it somehow added to the atmosphere of the movie.
Fastest anaconda eating person ever!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
- the Coast Guard had the slowest maritime vessels on the water back then... an outboard with a 50HP engine could outrun an 82-, 95-, or 110-ft cutter (and most others in inventory)...
Sorry to nitpick, here, but this is not a "published paper" as described in the parent post which implies some sort of scholarly work. As others have pointed out, this ground has been well-plowed before and there are no citations. This is an "educational resource" provided by the U of Chicago - reuse of the ideas are free, and you only need author's permission to reproduce charts, etc, and you can't, of course, freely incorporate the exact text into something you are going to sell.
It's a pretty good site, actually, IMHO. Archive is worth a couple of hours of browsing.
From the home page:
"The University of Chicago, through a consortium of 14 leading educational and cultural institutions called Fathom, provided high-quality, free educational resources on the Internet from January 2000 through March 2003.
This Library archive offers access to the complete range of free content developed for Fathom by University of Chicago faculty, researchers, and departments. Feel free to browse this archive of online learning resources, which include lectures, articles, interviews, and exhibits.
Faculty interested in finding other venues to disseminate materials for educational outreach should contact Stephen Gabel, Associate Provost, University of Chicago (sgabel@uchicago.edu, 702-0790)."
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/
Gah. Two points;
/does/ scale with volume, in fact rather better than that due to various economies of scale. If model engines really were more powerful per unit mass racecars would have thousands of tiny engines instead of one large one. There are in fact full-size propellor planes that can hang on the prop, but most planes aren't built with such extreme power-to-weight ratios because things like payload and range are more important.
/multiplied by/ speed. Large planes have higher cruise speeds than small planes with the same airfoil shape (in practice large planes make greater use of high-lift devices than small planes to keep landing speeds down). For a hovering insect the 'speed' part translates into the up and down velocity of the wings, which scales linearly with size if frequency is kept constant. The real limitation is the structural strength of the wing supports, which is the reason why large insects have proportionally larger wings and beat them slower (reduces stress on the supports and joints).
* Engine power
* This author once again makes the idiotic 'lift is proportional to wing area - so big flying creatures are impossible' mistake. I assume that he looks at Cessnas and proudly pronounces that 747s are impossible, because they'd have scaling-factor-cubed mass but only scaling-factor-squared lift. In real life lift is dependent on lots of complex factors, but the best simple model is area
"Suspension of disbelief" is a skill exercised in creating a movie - specifically, it's the art of creating a movie that is unrealistic, but not so unrealistic that it triggers the "wait, this is a load of crap" instinct in the watchers. It's the difference between reasoned speculation and juvenile wish-fulfillment. It's the trick of creating a movie that "makes sense" even though it's fiction. It's okay to be unlikely but you have to avoid unreasonable or impossible or the intelligent parts of the audience are going to (rightly) say that your movie sucks.
The willing suspension of disbelief is the viewer-side term for the phenomenon. What you're describing, the author-side element, is called verisimilitude. That is, the creator's ability to infuse a believability into their work, even if that work involves unrealistic elements.
The novelization was based on the original script, so it was at least originally going to be addressed, then cut for time, I'd imagine. In the novel, the alien had broken into the food locker, and ripped everything open. Of course, all of the "food" on the Nostromo was recycled waste, so basically everyone was eating sewage.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
The "half-molecule" explanation is kinda naive. In a gram of material, there's on the order of 10^23 molecules - or around 2^77 (a lot of halves!). To move from a linear size of micrometers to meters is 10^6 in linear dimension - or 10^18 in number of molecules. Running into half-molecules isn't the problem - it's that you're dealing with many fewer molecules - so new physics scales come into play!