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9 Laws of Physics That Don't Apply in Hollywood
Ant writes "Neatorama lists nine laws of physics that don't apply in Hollywood (movies and television/TV shows). In general, Hollywood filmmakers follow the laws of physics because they have no other choice. It's just when they cheat with special effects that people seem to forget how the world really works..."
The "Hollywood special" from a few moths back.
It seems that we have discussed this kind of things so many times. Hollywood are not meant to learn about real world. It is about entertainment.
-- tinyhack.com
I've always enjoyed intuitor dissect movie physics for some of the more popular movies.
http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/
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True enough, radioactivity isn't contagious. Remove the source of radiation, and with any luck, the body will heal. But certain types of radioactive materials DO glow without phosphorus- which in and of itself is a mildly radioactive material. Remember all of those green glow-in-the-dark mechanical clocks from the 1920s to the 1970s? Radium paint is what made them glow. And since light is in the electromagnetic spectrum- just about anything that glows without a power source is indeed "radioactive" to some extent. (note, this doesn't mean all "glow in the dark" materials, just some).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You don't see people's skeleton glow when they are being electrocuted.
That being said:
In most instances that come to mind, the director takes care of this problem by zooming you in on the Volcano, shell explosion, or baseball hit. Once you hear the sound at the source, the director usually cuts away to the actors after the sound has arrived. (As can usually be surmised by the ash and dirt flying at the camera.)
To the human ear, they are effectively simultaneous if the lighting crack is close enough to the observer. Considering how LOUD the director usually chooses to make the thunder, I don't think it's that bad of a summation. How about we start worrying why the actors aren't taking shelter?
This is actually incorrect. Radioactive "things" can emit light through two other methods:
1. They grow physically hot enough to glow red-hot or white-hot.
2. They heavily ionize the air around them, creating pretty streaks and rainbows.
However, the green-glow often seen in movies and cartoons does usually require the presence of phospher.
Or... the kicker could be properly grounded. If the kicker is properly braced against the ground, it's not impossible to send an unbalanced opponent off his feet. The fact that you can pick an opponent up and toss him in a single motion demonstrates that. That's not to say that the exact situation of many fights isn't ridiculous (excuse me, rediculous), but the physics of the situation don't prevent a kicker from delivering a blow hard enough to knock someone off their feet. Perhaps even to the point of sending them flying. (Though it's unlikely that it would be to the point of many kung-fu movies on strings. There's only so much structural capacity in the human body. After that, you start breaking your own bones.)
:-P
Now when they miss their target and don't go flying across the room...
Unless, of course, there is some sort of incline for a takeoff (ever notice how the Duke boys always manage to find that conveniently placed incline?) or the second section is lower than the first, thus allowing for the jump to complete depsite the drop in altitude. (As the camera appeared to make the situation in Speed.)
Smash cuts don't exist in real-life, either. Yet we don't complain about those. Slow motion is an entirely artistic thing, and is not related to the physics of the situation. At all.
Pretty much the rest of his arguments
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How about the fact that there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum?
Hollywood movies suck so much it seems like they violate this one.
blah blah blah
Time is rarely shown as continuous, forward moving, and in real time.
They are always using edits, skipping stuff and even going backwards and forwards. Really makes it hard to enjoy a film with your sense of reality totally shattered.
If you're going to write an article about the laws of physics, shouldn't you actually understand the laws of physics? "Equal and opposite reaction" doesn't mean that when I kick someone and they go flying in one direction, I must go flying in the opposite direction at the same speed, unless I had no momentum toward them before impact. In which case, umm, it would be kind of hard for me to hit them.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
That one bugged me about a recent Battlestar Galactica, as well. Inside the room, the characters were freezing because the air was leaking away. (Thus cooling the room.) I can accept that. But once they're blasted into space? Not a chance of freezing. No air for cooling == no loss of heat. (Actually, you can still lose it slowly through black-body radiation, but that's another topic.) Human skin is pretty good at holding pressure, so the big things are:
- Don't hold your breath (unnecessary internal pressure)
- Close your eyes (they're more susceptable to decompression)
See the research into the Space Activity Suit for more info.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
radium paint didn't glow because radium did... not in that concentration, or in those colors. the radium was mixed into a heavy coat of standard enamel with a whole bunch of phosphorescent pigments, which glowed.
until they burned out. old WWII radio dial markings from military gear have a lot of brown markings. they are radium paint with the phosphors all burnt out atomically, like a ghost image on a burned-in computer screen or monitor screen on an ATM. still radioactive and dangerous if ingested.
radium, polonium, radiocobalt, and other strong alpha emitters will emit a Czerinkon glow of blue when in the presence of hydrogen or water, which may be what you are thinking of. the blue glow is that of ionized hydrogen from the alpha hits, however, and should be thought of as a form of phosphorescence.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Friction, dude. Try the experiment again on roller skates.
I am not a crackpot.
I've got two complaints about #4.
1) The point of the Matrix was to bend the laws of physics. It was rather explicit.
2) The author obviously never watched Bruce Lee in action. If you plant yourself correctly you can send people flying across the room without moving an inch yourself. However, if you're in midair you certainly can't without the mentioned conversion of momentum.
Also concerning #5.
1) If it's a hole with level ends on both sides, it is entirely impossible to jump it on car without a ramp or other device to add a vertical component to velocity. However, in the event of a bridge being raised for a boat, the angle can potentially allow a vehicle to "jump" the gap. Is it likely or feasible? Not particularly, but it is possible.
2) This could have been expanded to include the "Bombs do not drop straight down" category of gravitational violation. A plane flying at high horizontal velocity v over a stationary target is not capable of dropping a bomb without horizontal velocity. Unless it fires the bomb backwards at a relative velocity -v, in which case we can have a semantic argument over whether the bomb is being dropped or fired.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Fast paced music doesn't really play when something exciting happens. Not everyone in real life looks like a hollywood actor. If people speak in a foreign language, you don't actually see an English language translation at the bottom of the screen. I tend to be pretty easy going on most non-realism since it is just there to tell a story. If the plot relies on a complete failure to grasp some basic fundamental of physics, (e.g. The Day After Tomorrow), I tend to be a lot more critical.
1. They are called Sound Suppressors not "silencers". They do not "silence" the sound just diminish it.
2. They do not really suppress the sound the way movies put it (I am looking at you Mr. Bauer). Motion pictures have produced the common misconception that sound suppressors ("silencers") completely silence the weapon's sound, or reduce it to a quiet whistling sound, which is in most cases very far from the truth. In fact, the emergent noise can still be heard from a fairly large distance. The quiet whistling sound associated with silencers is more attributable to the noise made by air guns 3. (And the most interesting for me) They are good just for a small number of shots (Yeah, again looking at you Mr. Bauer) Very effective suppressors either involve a large total suppressor volume, a moderately large volume plus many baffles, or wipes. It is possible to design a very small and compact suppressor with wipes which effectively silences a pistol; these suppressors have a lifetime of as few as 4-5 shots and typically no more than a few magazines of ammunition. Larger wipeless (baffle only) pistol or rifle suppressors may be nearly as effective for long lifetimes (hundreds or thousands of shots) but are relatively bulky, clumsy, and heavy.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I often wondered whether if you were in a vacuum you might even overheat? Since theres no air convection taking heat away from your body and any sweat would immediately vapourise as it came out your pores so it wouldn't have a chance to spread over your skin and cool you.
I am a firm believer in the ability to break the law of gravity.
I was out surfing and paddled into a wave. When I jumped up to my feet, I missed the sweet spot of the wave and ended up on the breaking part instead (ie. not a good location). To this day I swear the wave dropped out from under me followed by the board while I hung there in midair. Misquoting Douglas Adams, "gravity finally looked my way and wondered what the hell I was doing" and down I went. The couple of people who saw it were sure I was surfing a board made by "Acme".
It was a really bizarre physical sensation I have not been able to adequately explain. (or recreate).
--Keith
I lived in Fremont, CA when "Terminator II" was being filmed. For the Cyberdyne office building to be blown up, the crew put something like a hundred gallons of gasoline on the roof and ignited it. The result is a big fireball, which for viewers equates to "big explosion," but it's not, really. Most explosives don't produce flames. A hand grenade, for instance, makes a little whiff of black powder, no flames, but I guess movie directors and most audience members expect to see flames shooting out all over the place.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
basically because the western has been out of favor for a long time.
I refer, of course, to the infamous 250-shot revolver.
basically, back in the black and white days, nobody EVER reloaded their guns.
you never saw any recoil, either, but that's because those movies were made when men were MEN and sheep ran scared, and those actors were truly made of steel, riding horses at a full gallop and able to hit a bad guy in the back of the head from 300 yards with a pistol with a four-inch barrel. and their arms never moved when the revolvers and rifles fired.
and the scenery along the trail repeated itself every 60 yards or so, but then we're not going for the top 2,000,327 movie lies here, are we?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I am becoming more convinced that people watch series like 24 or The Unit and are mistakenly under the impression that they are accurate representations of US capability. Vast computing power at everyones fingertips, satellites retasked at a moments notice for real time video, instant communication anywhere in the world, highly sophisticated gadgets that never fail in the field and of course clairvoyant and all knowing agents. No surprise the US has been so gung-ho lately.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
When you sweat, the fluids come from inside your body. Since they're already heated, they will carry away some of the heat when they vaporize. So you'd probably die of other causes long before you overheated.
In the Space Shuttle, however, the bay doors are opened for heat rejection when in flight. Unlike the "cold" problem we see in Star Trek whenever they lose power (e.g. TNG: Booby Trap), they're far more likely to overheat due to the heat rejection systems being inoperable. (Presumably, a ship like the Enterprise would have a circulatory system that would pump heat from the inside of the ship to the outer skin, where it would be rejected as black body radiation.)
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1 Law of Computers That Doesn't Apply in Hollywood: Computer passwords cannot always be guessed in 3 tries.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
If you can't kill him with five shots, then you shouldn't be doing the job in the first place.
Don't forget that you want to use a lower grain count in your rounds, to reduce muzzle velocity. The last thing you need is the "pop" of a supersonic bullet giving you away. To compensate for the reduced muzzle velocity, use a bigger caliber to get the same stopping power.
So: large caliber, reduced power round, flash/sound suppressor on the barrel.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
The article says that the frequency of middle C is 256 Hz. Sorry, no, it's approximately 261.6Hz. Analysis: the article is quite flat.
On a related firearms note, they always f*** with the depiction of double action revolvers. When the actor checks to see if it's loaded, they release the catch and swing the cylinder out. They always spin it, and they always dub in the clicking sound of spinning the cylinder of a single action revolver (think cowboy Colt Peacemaker, where the cylinder doesn't swing out). In real life, they don't make any sound when you do that.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I wonder if these people also complain when the camera has an overhead shot, since in real life people always see things at eye level.
It's a matter of perspective. In a movie, the perspective is mutable. Don't think two asteroids colliding makes a sound? Try living inside an asteroid.
"Sound doesn't travel through a vacuum!" and "Sound doesn't occur when things happen to objects which are in a vacuum!" are two different and unrelated concepts.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
This is mostly due to the fact that Hollywood uses stage weapons, which have no projectile in front of the explosive. Having gotten to fire a whole plethora of movie weapons when working in theatre productions, I've seen these things up close. Without the projectile to provide back-pressure in the muzzle, the initial ignition which occurs at the back of the shell pushes the un-burned powder forward and out of the barrel where it burns as it escapes. This is what produces the huge muzzle flash in the movies.
Mind you, the weapons master also told me that they often add other things (corn starch, non-dairy creamer, etc.) to enhance the flash when they're shooting movies, because most directors like the effect so much.
In fact, most of the explosions that you see don't use gasoline any more either. Apparently non-dairy creamer produces a much better (and less dangerous to store) explosion. In fact, if you put a one gallon jug of non-dairy (powdered) creamer around a flash powder charge, you can get a 30 foot fireball. (My dad worked in pyrotechnics shows.)
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
I think when we see the tanker truck blow up, the Power Rangers jump-kicking someone in the chest, or Neo fly through the air like Superman, we understand it's fiction. It's called "suspension of disbelief." It's what makes movies enjoyable. No one is really going to think that these things happen as regularly (or at all) in real life as they do in the movies.
But the power rangers were established as having super powers, and superhero stuff generally gets a pass and sits more in the fantasy realm anyway. Neo did most of his tricks inside a virtual reality where the laws of phsycis are defined by the programmer and redefined by the hacker.
Lots of artistic things are done to improve the quality of the movie that don't necessarily translate to real life.
Agreed here. Too many film geeks complain about "innaccuracies" when what really happened was artistic license. The orientation of moon phases is a common one. Even "2001" gets dinged for that.
So, like you and the two responses above me, I was really skeptical of this "freezing in space" idea. I even told a student that a reference they had cited was wrong in claiming that you would freeze to death in the Sun's corona, the argument being that you wouldn't freeze for the same reason you wouldn't burn: no particles to transport heat.
But I recently found out, from a colleague over beer, that loss of heat from blackbody radiation is actually much faster than I thought. In the old days, in non-cold places, some people (ancient Egyptions among others) would actually make ice, basically by letting water in a deep, dark place radiate it's heat away. Sure it took hours, and it had to be already pretty cold outside, but considering that the water was also being continually warmed by all the air around it, that's pretty impressive for "only" blackbody radiation.
It's pretty easy to calculate heat loss. According to this, in our 293K atmosphere we lose 95W. In a 2.7K vaccuum this translates to 640W, due to us not getting any energy back from the atmosphere. With an average human body heat capacity of 3470 Joules per Kelvin per Kilo, a 70Kg person will drop to the freezing point from 305K in less than 3 and a half hours.
Ok, so that's pretty slow. Damn those movies suck.
god damn people - Learn to use Mirrordot / CoralCache / Google Cache / WHATEVER
MIRROR
Actually, sweat works because the evaporation process is endothermic. When water turns from liquid to gas it consumes heat. That's why you can cool down to 98.6F even when its 105F outside. That's also why a room with a "cool mist" humidifier consisting of a fan and a sponge-like filter will cool down several degrees.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The discussion wouldn't be complete without a reference to the Cartoon Laws of Physics.
"unless this is what you mean with a locked bolt, which i assume it is,"
Um, yes.
"but in that case, you'd have to reload after each shot.."
Well, you have to manually cycle the action to load the next round. But if you're using that kind of gun you're probably expecting to kill your target with one shot anyway.
But with subsonic ammunition, even the silenced MP5 firing full auto isn't horribly loud. You'd hear it from a reasonable distance away, but probably wouldn't even realise it was a gun until you saw bullet-holes appearing in people. With supersonic ammunition the sonic boom from the bullets would certainly make it obvious, but the low noise from the gun would still make it difficult to spot.
Wrong. As you sit in front of your computer, you exchange heat with your environment in three ways simultaneously: (1) conduction, (2) convection, (3) radiation.
The part you are referring to is heat transfer mechanism (1), conduction, as your body heats cooler air molecules around you. Mechanism (2), as occurs when those heated air molecules rise toward the top of the room making room for cooler ones, also requires air.
However, mechanism (3), the most effective of the three, does not require any medium at all. You, like all baryonic matter, emit electromagnetic radiation with frequencies and intensities as described by blackbody radiation, dependent on temperature. An object twice as hot gives of 16 times as much heat in radiation per unit time.
Normally, when sitting in front of your computer, you are radiating like mad, and so losing heat. However, so are the walls of your apartment. Those walls, being nearly the same temperature as you are, heat you to a large degree, making up for the heat that you are losing to radiation. Hence if, on a cold night, you are walking down a hallway in which one wall has a fireplace behind it, you immediately notice how warm the wall is without coming anywhere near it.
Considering that the "walls" in space are the 2.73K cosmic microwave background radiation, and that a person's temperature is more like 300K, you would radiate 10^8 times more energy than your receive. You'd freeze in a hurry.
Now, if there's a star heating you from one side, this can partially make up the difference. You still get the one-side-super-hot and one-side-super-cold problem, then, like the surface of Earth's moon writ small.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Do they have car tyres squealing everywhere, even on sand at 5mph?
Get your own free personal location tracker
Trust me, CGI effects are absolutely up to scratch for explosions. I think it's more likely that those with plumes of black smoke are done on effects machines because that's what people expect, rather than using gasoline.
Explosions are actually rather easy, and the software somewhat cheap (see Particle Illusion for one such solution). One of the best showreels I have seen is Autodesk's. It goes to show that almost every work whose post-production goes further than clip rearranging and editing has effects of some sort; most of which you won't even notice.
Unless something is really wrong with the powder charge you're using in the gun, there shouldn't really be any "sparks" coming out of the end of the barrel, at least with modern smokeless powder.
The muzzle flash that comes out of a gun is superheated gas, the product of the powder's rapid combustion; a "spark" would indicate some form of burning / incandescently-hot large particles, and there really shouldn't be anything that big left after combustion. If there are big (enough to be visible) chunks of burning powder coming out the muzzle of your (modern) gun, you have some sort of problem. I'm not sure whether you'd even technically call a real muzzle flash a "flame," since it's not really burning anymore; the majority of the chemical reaction that launched the bullet, ran to completion in the first few fractions of a second after the primer detonated. On weapons with short barrels, the muzzle flash is visible because the exhaust gases exit the muzzle out into the atmosphere before they've had a chance to cool below the point of incandescence. I don't think there's really anything in the way of actual 'combustion' still going on.
Muzzle flash is another thing that Hollywood tends to exaggerate; although it's definitely an issue in real life, it's more difficult to see on a bright, sunny day than you'd expect from watching action flicks. FWIW, I think that they simulate muzzle flashes by using propane or methane, particularly for automatic weapons, in movies.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I know most threads have been about how the postulated laws are broken, but there's a bigger question to be asked in this - do people, who go to the movies, want the laws of physics to be obeyed? I think the film industry has actually done it right - we go to the movies to, quite literally, be fooled. There's a reason sci-fi films end up being blockbusters. People are so fed up with the mundane, they want to see something extraordinary, even if it is something infinitesimally trivial as a simple bullet spark. It draws a person into the film with the appeal of the extraordinary, and gives them what they paid for - an escape from reality, even if they don't realize it.
No air for cooling == no loss of heat.
Two words: evaporative cooling.
That's how the Space Activity Suit keeps you from overheating while working against its resistance.
-- Alastair
... that the Law of Slashdotting remains in effect.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
It should probably be pointed out for those who have not handled firearms before that a .22 is not a certain kill, even at close range. They certainly can kill, but the movie weapons are often shot from across the room where -- were I a professional killer -- I would not trust to be a kill shot, let alone a clean "drop him" shot. Birds, squirrels and paper targets are a better bet.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Silent shotgun shells are much more effective and economical than noise suppressors. Not so good for sneaking up on people in crowds I suppose, but they are very effective (quieter than the mechanical noise of the action) and add no limitations to manually operated shotguns.
I would add that the author of TFA doesn't understand the physics of hand to hand combat very well. It is true that targets will not fly accross the room when kicked. In fact the better targetted the kick the less they will recoil. However, when kicking you are accelerating much of your body (hip, leg, foot) toward the target. The reaction has to overcome this momentum. Furthermore, if you use orthodox technique you have a connection to the ground specifcally designed to transfer the reaction through my musculo-skeletal structure into the earth (the emphasis on this base varies from style to style, but it always exists). In movies people are always jump kicking, but in real life that is of limited utility. You don't want to lose that connection to the ground unless absolutely necessary.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
I think the ammo you're talking about is not jacketed in steel, but cased in steel. And yes, some people believe it to be significant rougher on guns than conventional copper-cased stuff, but not because of the bullet going down the barrel proper, but due to the damage that the steel case may be doing to the chamber during loading and extraction.
.223 Remington chamber, as opposed to the 5.56mm "NATO Chamber" or the compromise "Wylde Chamber").
You used to find this stuff under the "Wolf" brand name, and it was mostly made in Russia and some other ex-WP countries. I think Wolf may be trying to move upmarket and has ditched the steel-cased stuff, recently though.
At any rate, the bullets in that stuff were pretty standard at least that I ever saw, but instead of using a brass case, as is used in most Western countries' ammunition, they went with steel cases, covered in some sort of paint and lacquer (assumedly for rust-proofing). There were a number of issues with it, particularly in close-tolerance weapons. First was just the threat of damage to the chamber because it's a harder metal (although I have doubts about this), more significantly was that if you blasted a bunch of it off rapidly, you could get the gun's chamber hot enough to start melting the lacquer off of the cartridges, and over time, build up a layer of lacquer inside the chamber, that would change its dimensions, and lead to feed problems, particularly if you switched back to other types of ammo.
I know a number of people who got burned by the lacquer-buildup problems, because they had AR-15 style rifles with tight-tolerance chambers (the
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I worked at Lam Research in Fremont. The building used was one of our assembly buildings for plasma etchers. We had a few pics of Ahnold up at the time.
God, you bring back bad memories. How dare you, sir!
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I spent many years as an army reservist. Every so often we would head out into a training area to live fire our personal and unit weapons (both at night and during the day).
It is true I have never seen a spark during the day.
At night, I have seen rounds from machine guns (7.62mm and .50 cal) spark on rock, not metal. Especially with the .50's (larger round) you get sparks every time you hit rock at night.
yeah...or the fact I'm in MOTHERF*CKIN SPACE!
For the most part, what I see is not a race between the heroes and the explosion, but a race between the following two things:
Mostly, this is forgivable. When the heroes start running, the explosion hasn't usually happened yet, you can certainly see that they are not literally outrunning the blast front of the explosion. The shot is cut together to make it appear "close" (always), and the explosion is represented by something graphic (burning gasoline), because this is visual storytelling, not a filmic document. This just has to do with the way the thing is shown, for the most part no one in the movie's world is claiming implicitly or explicitly that the heroes can run faster than an explosion.
You need to look at these things through this lens of visual storytelling. Consider how fragile the human body is in horror movies. You would think we are all thin bags of blood and meat just barely hanging on to a skeleton of matchsticks and topped with a skull no tougher than a watermelon. People pop, break, are pulled apart, etc. In reality, people are mostly tough. Their structure is elastic and strong, the connective tissue hard to break. However, visually seeing human bodies as fragile in this way is shocking and horrifying, which is precisely the point. Saying that it's unrealistic is missing the point.
demi
So, when you see a gal kick someone across the room, technically, the kicker (or holder of a gun) must fly across the room in the opposite direction - unless she has a back against the wall.
Not only that, but it fails to take into effect the masses of the two individuals. Just like I could push, kick, or punch a ball away from me, a person with enough mass can in fact repel a person of smaller mass over a certain distance. Perhaps not across the room and partway through a wall, but most people could already figure that part out.
Still, whether it's a person or any other object, it all comes down to friction, angle, and mass. I semi travelling at decent speed can send a small car flying, especially if it manages to "scoop" it with a certain angle. A mid-sized person braces right can propel another person away, and a larger person (well, more massive) can do so to a greater extent.
As to the shotgun blasts blowing someone across the room, I've never shot anyone or anything at close range with a shotgun, but it might work against a smaller person/animal. With a really big gun held by a really massive person (properly braced) it would possibly stagger the shooter while propelling the shootee...
Yeah, and they're called "automobiles" not "cars." The term "silencer" may not be as precise as you like but it is just as valid a term as "suppressor."
They do not really suppress the sound the way movies put it (I am looking at you Mr. Bauer).There are a lot more variables here than you are implying. I have some first hand experience with home-made silencers from my nonstandard youth. A .22 caliber is the most commonly suppressed round historically and used for assassinations. With a dry suppressor made in the basement, a .22 semi-auto will make the typical action noise and you can hear the bullet hit the target, but the sound of the bullet leaving the barrel is negligible. With a bolt action, you hear a sound like a pebble being thrown against your target and that is about it.
They are good just for a small number of shotsThis is true with some sound suppressors, but not all. There are a variety of home made one shot suppressors you can build yourself and there are commercial, "wet" suppressors that have a limited number of effective uses. There are also traditional baffle suppressors that are just as effective for 100 shots as for 2. The relative size of the suppressor is dependent upon many factors, but you can certainly build a dry suppressor about 8 inches long that would make a .22 caliber pistol with subsonic rounds pretty darn quiet.
Why in the blue blazes anyone would equate reality to film is beyond me. It's FILM. You know? Willing suspension of disbeleif and all that crap...
Everyone knows you can only survive in the vacuum of space for 30 seconds!
Hmmm, let me think: Tits don't sag. Bimbos become celluloid icons. Outdoors has five shadows. People can be perfectly heard in clubs/restaurants etc. Movies are ranked by inflated millions of dollars rather than seats actual sold. Jane Fonda looks 50. Hollywood is a place which cannot be defined by Cartesian boundaries. You can have no vocal skills and still sing in a movie. And, of course the ever-present parking spaces!
*** Don't be dull.***
Frostbite from sweating? No. As I said, your body will immediately react, and close the pores. Your body will stop losing heat through any means other than black body radiation. No frostbite, sorry.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Come on... this is Slashdot! Reading articles just takes time away from posting comments!
I'm sure no one will see this as it's much too late. But most of the modded-up posts I see aren't looking at the primary heat loss you'll experience in space, or in a vacuum of any kind. Water evaporation. If you take a jar of water and put it into a vacuum it will freeze over very quickly, because of the heat of evaporation, the same way sweat evaporation cools the body. Since our bodies are basically bags of water, if you put us in space unprotected, that water will promptly be sucked out of us by the near-zero pressure, and the evaporation will leave us frozen solid. The same thing applies to any fluid leaking from a spacecraft. It will probably rapidly form small ice spheres, which will then rapidly sublimate into vapor, depending on its characteristics.
Yes. At that low a pressure, your sweat will vaporize instantly as it comes out of your pores. As will any surface moisture on your skin the moment you're exposed to vacuum. You'll be quite dry, and I expect rather cool too.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I don't know about anyone one else, but as a martial artist I see a serious problem with #4. While movies do exagerate how far someone will get thrown, the kicker definitely doesn't bounce off and go flying in the opposite direction. While I havent kicked someone across the room, ive definitely kicked someone into the air at least a few feet, and I wasnt thrown backwards. The way I see it, as long as you're rooted to the ground by one foot, the opposing force is tranferred along that leg and into the ground. For a jump kick, the impact just slows you down, you dont stop spinning mid-air and suddenly start flying back across the room.
1. You can enlarge the eye of someone in a photo, or a video, and get a good full-size image of what they are looking at.
2. If you find a single hair at a crime scene, it always will be from one the criminals, not any of the hundreds of other people who walked through the place recently.
3. If you run out of bullets, you are requirecd to throw your gun at your foe. You will also never be able to hit him with it.
4. Searching for a fingerprint in a computer database requires that every fingerprint in that database be displayed on your terminal. Also, when trying to break a password, you must display every single password being tried.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Physics? Ok, nerds. Here's some movie laws of sociology that do not apply.
1. Nerds are not good looking
2. Nerds are not cool with the ladies
3. Nerds do not "get the girls"
4. No hot babe is gonna have a "moment" when you stare into each other's eyes and fall in love with you. As you lean in, she'll go "ick" and put up the palm of her hand. As if!
5. If a nerd actually saves the planet in reality, the hot girl will still go with the hairy, sweaty janitor.
6. If you finally get so ticked off you take a swing at the big bully, he beats the crap out of you again, anyway.
7. The hot girl laughs at you and starts giving the bully head while you cry and crawl off in search of pr0n.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Why is it that Superman is able to pick up, and even fly with an entire house, and yet the weight of the house is only supported by the surface area of his hands? Must be a helluva strong building!
"So, when you see a gal kick someone across the room, technically, the kicker (or holder of a gun) must fly across the room in the opposite direction - unless she has a back against the wall."
I think the author is confusing conservation of energy with conservation of momentum. In an elastic collision, in which energy is conserved, two people of equal mass will head in opposite directions. In reality, both the kicker and the kickee will absorb some of the energy of the kick, thus resulting in an inelastic collsion.
"For instance, in space the hero shouldn't be able to shout out instructions to the other astronauts from a spot several yards away."
That's what radio transmitters are for, and if you're wearing your helmet, you probably have a radio.
Explosions are what are particularly interesting. You will hear something as particles from the explosion collide with the hull of your ship, but it probably won't sound like an explosion.
Don't forget that streets at night are always wet. Always. Even in lengthy tunnels where no rain can get (i.e. Back to the Future Part II).