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Bad Movie Physics Hurt Scientific Understanding
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?"
Learning is learning, entertainment is entertainment. Star trek has way more fundamental problems with physics than Speed or Die Hard. People shouldn't get their science from TV.
Is there anything left that someone hasn't claimed is 'hurting the children'?
It must be the movies. Before movies, everybody had a perfect understanding of physics.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
We just need to ensure that we teach our children critical thinking skills. Never mind movies, in a world with Fox News and entertainment and lifestyle stories that cloak themselves as "news", this is more important than ever if future generations are going to enjoy a standard of living that even approaches what we have now.
Let me preface this comment with the fact that I am a physicist (astrophysics) and am quite often frustrated by the poor physics shown in movies.
However, I think they're neglecting a very basic fact. Humans have evolved to find Newtonian mechanics intuitive! (especially in translational cases, somewhat less in rotational ones) If someone throws a ball, you can quickly figure out approximately where it is going to land. You have no need to do calculations, because its evolutionarily hardwired into your brain. Watching a movie which doesn't accurately display a free-falling bus is not going to erase that.
It's true that people don't know enough physics to determine the validity of what they see in movies, but they already know enough to get through life. I'd love for everyone to know enough physics to be understand the devices that they use in their lives, but that's probably not a reality in the modern age.
I think what they're encountering is a resistance to learning the formalizations of physics. As soon as you step beyond Newtonian mechanics (really, beyond two-body problems) all that evolutionary intuition is gone. When you get to physics at that stage, you must place it on firm mathematical footing, or you have no hope of understanding: that is hard work.
They are seeing this decline in science understanding, but I think that's an artifact of an overall educational decline, rather than a specific effect of Hollywood movies. Young people are now expecting to be entertained, and while physics is beautiful, at some point it requires you to sit down in a empty room with a pad of paper and a pencil. If anything, it's the "action-packed entertainment" nature of movies, rather than any bad physics that is likely having the detrimental effect. However, if they can entertain these students and have them learn something too, that's fine with me.
No, a dentist is a great example. A dentist cannot be outsourced to another country - people will always need dental work done, and it will have to be done locally unless long distance travel becomes faster and cheaper than a trip to the local dentist.
/., are essential. Can you imagine what would happen to an organization without any herders for the sheep? I'm an engineer, and I know that I'd certainly lose sight of the big picture if left to my own devices.
You have a pretty terrible attitude about not-technical occupations, by the way. You need "speculators", brokers, and managers. Speculators are where the investment capital comes from - without them, where do the Googles of the world come from? Brokers are also a necessity - I don't know about you, but I'm not simultaneously an expert in all things. I could not possibly know the ins-and-outs of everything from the grain and pork markets to the local real estate market - I need a broker to make sure that my grocery store is full and that I filled out all the right paperwork for a house. Managers, for as much as they are made fun of on
There is tremendous value in finding inefficiencies in a system and removing them, even if the speculator/broker/manager gets a slice.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I can't believe nobody has called anybody on this.
Learning and education should be entertaining. Or at least, you should have the option of having an interesting and educational experience. I understand that there's stuff that one has to learn simply to have a job and function on a day to day basis in society, but if you receive no joy from learning new things in some sphere (i don't care if it's baseball statistics, esoteric poetry, how to make model ferraris or whatever), somewhere, then you probably live a sad static life.
There are lives at stake here!
It is therefore bizarre to expect entertainment to be factually accurate.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The problem is that the majority of what we need to know for our non-working and working lives is inherently not very interesting to children who would rather be doing something that children consider "fun".
/., it is) -- but it first takes a self-driven *desire* to learn the given material; a certain passion... Without it, education is rote tedium; an obstacle in the way of other, more-entertaining things.
Most kids don't regard writing code as "fun", for example -- and that is the job of a software developer.
Most kids don't regard the determination of chemical bonds as "fun" -- but that's fundamental to the field of chemistry.
Most kids (including me, when I was one, and still to this day) couldn't care less what Shakespeare wrote -- and what he wrote is frankly irrelevant to anybody who does something useful for a living (scientists, engineers, doctors), though still useful for people who "play" for a living (e.g. actors/actresses), and possibly lawyers (when using a Shakespearean story as an digestible analogy that a jury or a judge can understand, anyway).
Most kids don't care about managing their personal finances, because that's not "fun" -- even though they will go into debt and/or broke if they don't learn how.
And so on. Rather than do any of these things, most kids would rather watch TV, run around outdoors (which is at least good for their physical health and socially-stimulative), play video games, smoke/drink/huff cans of pesticide, etc.. Real life can't compete with the entertainment value of delinquincy, and at the age of (for example) 14, the ostensibly more-responsible age of 21 seems almost infinitely far-away ("so who cares, right?")...
The sad reality is that most of life is boring -- and the sooner people recognize this, accept it, move on and learn the necessary material anyway, the better off we'll all be.
As a professional young adult, I know I spend *very* little of my 168 hours/week doing things I consider purely "fun" (playing video/computer games, poker, traveling, getting laid, writing code for a personal project (which is half work-related anyway, since such projects are a vehicle for learning new stuff))... Most of what I do involves working, doing things related to my work, maintaining my physical and/or financial health, and planning for my future.
The life of a responsible, disciplined adult isn't easy, nor does it tend to be fun. But we find ways to make such trivial work interesting...
More power to teachers if they can find ways to make education and learning interesting. It *can* be (and I think for most of us reading
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?