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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?"
I teach physics at a community college, and I actually like to use Coyote and Roadrunner as an illustration of people's Aristotelian preconceptions. When the coyote steps off a cliff, he has to stop moving forward before he can look down and go, "oh, time to fall." This is exactly what Aristotle said had to happen: an object could be doing forced motion or natural motion, but it couldn't do both at the same time. One reason Aristotelianism was accepted for thousands of years was that it does a good job of codifying the incorrect expectations that people tend to have intuitively. If it wasn't for Coyote and Roadrunner, it would be harder for me to teach this!
My sister works at Pixar, and a lot of her work is physics simulations. (She's working on hair and cloth these days.) She says that a lot of the time, they try simulating the right physics first, but then that comes out not looking the way they want, e.g., water splashes realistically, but they want a cartoon splash, not a realistic splash. So they intentionally mung the equations to get the artistic effect they want. Well, why not? Picasso painted people with two eyes on the same side of their face.
The reason people in the US are ignorant about physics isn't because they see movies with incorrect physics in them, it's because K-12 science education in the US is a disaster.
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Actually, Star Trek should be given more due than that. They spent a lot of time considering real physics when coming up with some of their ideas. It's science FICTION but they based a lot of it in basic principles. Warp drive functions by bunching space up in front of the ship, and then letting it expand, carrying the ship forward. Gravitational fields and some concepts of wormholes work the same way. The problem is a matter/antimatter reaction doesn't provide enough energy for this, but being the most energetic source imagineable, they went with it. They took real ideas in quantum and theoretical physics and ignored the details. You would use a tachyon particle beam to communicate at faster-than-light speeds since the particles (if the existed outside of mathematical constructs) travel faster than light. Never mind that they can't be used to convey information. This 'stretching' of the physics into fiction is a little different than the bus from Speed example that falgrantly ignores the most basic concepts of Newtonian mechanics. Bravo to the professor for trying to bring a little reality back to where it's due.
Reminds me of a firearms instructor who'd compiled a videotape, no doubt illegal in spite of Fair Use, consisting of terrible movie moments in the context of firearms safety. "True Lies," if I recall correctly, was a particularly egregious offender.
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Star Trek, like most sci-fi, basically invents technologies which work around what we currently consider physical limitations. IIRC, in Star Trek, they don't use "tachyon particle beams" to communicate at FTL speeds; they use "subspace", which is never really explained in any detail. That's the way it should be too: what's important for the story is that they have the means of communicating FTL, not the exact details in how they accomplish this. So they invent a plot device to allow the story to progress. Sci-fi which gets too involved in the details of speculative technology usually gets dated very quickly; Star Trek has lasted this long I think because the stories were more important than the technologies. They have a ship, it goes faster-than-light somehow, they have energy weapons, and can transport themselves from place to place instantaneously, within a certain range (orbit to planet surface). Given these, they come up with stories that work within that framework.
There's a lot about the universe our physicists don't understand yet. They can't even figure out how to get Quantum Theory and Relativistic Theory to agree. They don't even really understand how gravity works, and that's the most important force which affects us humans in our daily lives. There's now some evidence that there might be other dimensions besides the 4 we're familiar with, and various particles have been detected (like neutrinos) which previously were only hypothesized. Many people like to claim that lightspeed is a hard-and-fast limit, and that it's impossible to travel faster. 150 years ago people thought it was impossible to fly in a machine that was heavier than air. There's no telling what other facets about our universe exist which we are unable currently to observe and understand, just like we had no idea how to split or fuse atoms and create enormous amounts of energy 100 years ago.
Agreed. Resistance to formalization also arises as it is not that glamorous -- look at the "physics-work" in CSI, or even a somewhat more realistic Mythbusters. Sitting down and calculating something is not as cool as making a big explosion or dancing around with a beautiful female in an all-glass cubicle (or perhaps I am just in the wrong job :). I think that demonstrating quantum mechanical tunneling via *math* is amazing, yet has very little intuitive grasp without the firm mathematical background.
Mythbusters is particularly bad about this, often things that they "test" you could just do on a piece of paper and see it is or is not going to work. Other times the design of the experiment is hugely flawed, often conceptually, and nobody talks about the elephant in the room (I could give you a bunch of examples -- one that comes to mind is the 'catching an arrow' episode which does not take into account anticipation of reaction or even moving the target backward). However I (as you can tell) still enjoy the show once in a while -- it is, to me, entertainment and kind of funny. I loved "Beyond 2000" as a kid (does anybody remember this?) and Mythbusters I think is by the same producers...
One of the things that would help all of what we outlined is a change in culture where discovery and true inquiry is advocated, asking well formulated / scientific questions is ok... To this degree, getting kids interested in answering questions empirically is a good thing. The Mythbusters occasionally visits true scientists at nearby NASA, etc., and attempts to learn very well and are respectful of what they learn, which is great IMHO. Kids / young adults will see this and want to be like the expert (hopefully!)
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There are actually some very positive side effects of Movie Science.
For instance, both the Columbine killers and the recent London "bombers" had an entirely false belief that propane cooking cylinders would explode like grenades. In reality, the cylinders are purposefully designed to rupture without causing a fragmentary explosion.
The recent London "bombers" even seemed to believe that any car set alight would produce a large explosion. In truth, cars burn all the time, it is very, very rare for any road vehicle of any sort to explode. In fact, none of the London "bombers" schemes had any real potential of a large explosive effect.
For this, I think it's fair to say we can thank good old Movie Science. As long as ignorant villians keep believing what they see on TV, we'll be all the safer for it.
It's not just Shakespeare they're talking about here, it's fictional literature in general. And I agree wholeheartedly with them. Good fictional works are about the fundamental ideas and feelings that make us human.
I wish my teachers has told me that before they started on Shakespeare, with its archaic turn of phrase and out-dated spelling, the modern poetry, the ungrammatical and poorly spelled trendy modern prose, etc.
"Why are they teaching us this when the spelling isn't even right and the sentences don't even make sense," Is what I thought at age 12, and I resented English as a result.
My understanding was that it was all about spelling, grammar, writing reports and answering comprehension questions.
"They" didn't let the cat out of the bag for another four years. By that time, I'd exhausted the supply of Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams and had given up reading other than computer programming and science magazines and computer science text books.
Somewhere along the lines I went on a fruit break.
By the way, Shakespeare has "too many words" for me, but the English teachers (mrs Turgid included) seem to love it. As far as I can tell, his plays present a canned and comprehensive study of the major facets of the human condition, and that is their value. Some people derive pleasure from the way it's written. It just sounds like a lot of verbal diarrhea to me. I sat through Sean Bean's Macbeth once and came out feeling like my ears had been boxed and my brain was numb from all the words.
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