Take a look at a few of cinema's most mind-boggling moments of scientific inaccuracy-plus a few rare films that manage to get things (mostly) right
Posted 09.04.2007 at 1:00 am
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by The Everett Collection In The Day After Tommorrow, Hollywood's not the only thing erronously creamed
The Everett Collection
As we reach the close of the summer blockbuster season, reports of a recent paper by two professors at the University of Central Florida recently caught our eye. In it, the physicists Costas Efthimiou and R.A. Llewellyn assert that movies are making their students dumber. ""Sure, people say everyone knows the movies are not real," says Efthimiou, "but my experience is many of the students believe what they see on the screen."
Whether you believe them or not, it's always fun to take a scientist's eye to the silver screen to see just how ridiculous things can get when directors and screenwriters set poetic license against physical reality. High-school physics teacher Adam Weiner does just that in his great new book Don't Try This at Home! The Physics of Hollywood Movies. Here, we take a look at a few of the worst offenders, and at the actual science behind them.
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you may want to check your speed record for the XXX movie critique. the fastest recorded speed on a snowboard is 125.45 mph, not 50mph. you were only off by 75 mph, but i guess im just picky...
The movie Serenity honored no sound in space right at its beginning and throughout.
Great article, keep up the good work.
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From the 1902 production Voyage to the Moon to the recent What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?, physics has appeared in numerous feature films. Sidney Perkowitz examines the accuracy of physics in the movies and asks how realistically physicists are portrayed on screen
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