Spiderman, Iron Man, and Captain Kirk might be able to take on the villains of the universe, but they’re no match for a physicist. At yesterday’s Comic-Con panel The Physics of Hollywood Movies, Adam Weiner*, a high school physics instructor and author of Don’t Try this at Home! The Physics of Hollywood Movies gauged the scientific accuracy of favorite sci-fi, superhero, and action-movie scenes:
Among the things we learned:
- X-Men’s Storm would need to consume 120,000 in food calories or have a nuclear reactor in her stomach to generate the minimum 500 million joules of energy needed to shoot lightning bolts from her body. On the plus side, such a metabolism definitely helps one stay in movie shape.
- In Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise survives a 2,200-g mid-air body slam (where g is the acceleration due to Earth’s gravity, 9.8 meters per second squared), but Newton’s second law doesn’t fare so well. “A force to the head exceeding 150 g’s is usually fatal.” Usually, sure. All that Scientology in his noggin probably helped cushion the blow…
- Best physics flick went to 2001: A Space Odyssey for the jogging sequence in the rotating circular space station, while raspberries went to Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow and The Core for such travesties as exploding fireballs on an asteroid with no atmosphere. Star Trek got a (dis)honorable mention for phasers that took a half-second to reach their targets. “You’d be better off with a gun,” he noted disdainfully.
After the session, Weiner noted the rising trend of scientists—James Kakalios (The Physics of Superheroes, Lawrence Krauss (Physics of Star Trek) and our own Phil Plait—using pop culture to teach science literacy. “The public’s view of the world is so shaped by popular culture, we have to start to make those connections and show what’s real and what’s not,” he said.
—Guest-blogger Susan Karlin
* Folks in LA can catch Weiner when he hosts “When Worlds Collide: The Science of Movies” panel at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Aug 6.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Love this info! count me in!
July 24th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Cruise used his scientology space alien powers to do that stunt for real.
July 26th, 2009 at 6:07 am
Always entertaining, Sue. Thanks for this super explanation of the dichotomies of comic book physics.
Tom Cruise is a scientologist? I mean, I knew he was an insecure, dyslexic, closeted homosexual loony, but SCIENTOLOGY?! The man is a superhero of Freakishness.
July 28th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Now this is science information that can be used anywhere!
Dont forget all the inaccuracies in our beloved Super Man: for one catching Ms. Lane at that speed and bringing her to an abrupt halt would surely kill her, and rewinding the earths rotation would surely have dire consequences for earths inhabitants.
ooh, ooh and iron man falling landing in his suit, sure the suit is magnificently built to withstand damage, but he is still an ordinary human and would have been squished within in the suit due to force and pressure of impact
July 28th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
For the dumbest physics see the movie “ABSOLUTE ZERO”, Marvista Entertainment (2006). The writer must have been a kindergarten drop out.
July 29th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Your list of the dumbest physics has overlooked the most obvious “physics blunder”—that is explosions in space with sounds of explosions. Even a modern a movie as “Moon” makes this same blunder.
July 29th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
there is no comment in the comment field to edit!
July 29th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Gary – while moviemakers regularly violate ‘In space no one can hear you scream’, they may in fact have a reason rather than merely blundering. At the 1976 Science Fiction Worldcon in Kansas City, Lucas et al were present to promote ‘Star Wars’. A fan asked if they’d ‘get it right’, like ‘2001′, and he replied that in fact he would have sound, which got loud boos. He went on to explain that it was required (at least in his film) for dramatic effect (as I remember after 30+ years, spacership battles w/o sound would simply not work).