Hollywood Physics

you may want to check your source on the snowboard speed record. guinness lists the record at 125.45 mph, so i guess you were only off by about 75 mph....

but you forgot the shout-out to Firefly for getting the sound in space right.

I personally have been clocked at a max speed of 72 mph with an average of 65 mph on my snowboarding runs. This was just us having fun - no speed suits or long boards either...

50 MPH - what a crock - makes me wonder if the rest of the article is that poorly researched...

If you plan on spouting science, be prepared to verify your "facts".

yes, that calculation would be correct, but then it would have been named "Deep Impact" because the crew ultimately failed in blowing the rock to pieces. Now, even though the actual film "Deep Impact" was a huge flop, pointing out that blunder in "Armageddon" would prove that it would be "The Real Deep Impact" movie. Just the possibility of that blast actually separating the rock is what makes "Armageddon" a SCIENCE FICTION film, not a stab at making it a reality. Please look at the genre of the film before generously tearing it apart.

"marquis" - please elaborate on how this word is pertinent in this context. Thanx

Image five, that is - as in:

"Let's talk about the marquis scene"

Image 6 Syntax error:

"It's true, however, that those unfortunate enough to have their spacecraft destroyed be in a spaceship while it was exploding"

HTH,

The Pedant king =]

Image 8:

"some materialsmetals have a knack forwill soaking up static electrical fields"

Image 9:

"would barely even scratch the surfaceonly get you 0.0004 percent"
&
"presumably putting keeping them away"

Great article though (typos excepted).

Somewhat reminiscent of 'Mythbusters' - or even moreso a UK TV show called "Hollywood Science", presented by Robert Lewellyn. You may know him as 'Kryten' from 'Red Dwarf' or, perhaps, as the presenter of the UK's 'Scrapheap Challenge'.

Actually your calculations for The Day After Tomorrow started with another bit of bad science. That inaccuracy regards the temperature at the tropopause. Based on the 06 Apr 2008 00z upper air soundings from several cities in the Eastern US, it was about -65C, just a wee bit warmer that the -100C quoted in the movie. Those soundings also placed the tropopause at about 12,000m. Using a simple equation based on the standard lapse rate of 6C per 1km, the air would be about 7C or 45F (72 degrees of warming over the 12km fall) were such storms able to exist, but since hurricanes are systems that require warm waters above 80F to even begin forming...

Well I guess the deep freeze theory is now debunked. If an enhancement was made to the pressure would it cool it more?

I actually saw several of these on Mythbusters. Great show they cover just about everything messed up in hollywood.

Moshable Music

Tom Cruise? Did everyone else turn down the role?