h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've started writing an Entry on 'Science Fail' in the movies. My first attempt is at A850628.

1. Do you think this is an interesting topic for an entry?
2. Has it been done before?
3. Can you think of any examples?

aliens

the ship is in orbit and they are all loaded onto the drop ship

they have the countdown and the bolts release

the drop ship drops like a stone out of the hangar bay

it wwouldn't it wwould just carry on along its orbit, it would need thrusters firing to move it down towward the planet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDLQg8ZKBS8&feature=related

Thanks. I've added that, and you're now on the author list.

oh once I start on this i don't think I'll stop too easily. not sure I should...

You've spelled reagents wrong in that first example

To be honest I wouldn't personally worry too much about all the reagent bottles being coloured. Yes most are white but one look at the world around us does tend to indicate that colour does exist and a film is there to entertain and not necessarily be entirely accurate.

Personally I think there are many more things to worry about than colours in a lab.

Dunno if this goes into the Jurassic part film but certainly in the book the author makes a massive fail when he talks about the four amino acids that make up DNA. FAIL!!!!
There are 20 amino acids (that are coded for by DNA at least) and they make PROTEINS not DNA. DNA is composed of four BASES, not amino acids.

I think we had a conversation about this somewhere recently.

The whole idea that one guy can come up with a cure for a disease in one afternoon as is roughly the case in Outbreak is completely unbelievably....This sort of thing takes a team of thousands around 20 years to be successful - if they manage it at all.

Oops, I've started...

Yes, it's a good idea for an article by the way.

interesting discussion of problems in space battles as often depicted:
http://gizmodo.com/5426453/the-physics-of-space-battles

Has it been done before? Well, there is this site...

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/

But don't let that stop you - it is an excellent subject for the Edited Guide.

"he director objected that all the chemicals were white - the scientists responded that almost all chemicals are white"

Do you mean 'colourless'?

My favourite boo-boo in Jurassic Park is when they spell Stegosaurus wrong on the test tube of DNA.

And your reasoning on the Back To The Future alleged-fail only really works if the sound waves from all the speakers are in perfect synchronisation and travelling on precisely the same vector. So that's not really a fail at all.

B

There was only one speaker. A speaker can't throw you across a room.

For the EG, a little more analysis of why the errors are there might be an idea. Are these common in movieland or have the makers produced a brand new violation of the laws of nature?

For example, the Jurrasic Park story is good - the director deliberately ignored scientific advice for aesthetic reasons.

Anyhow, one of my favourites is the bridge jump in Speed. The bus goes straight off the end of the road (despite the earlier dialogue there is no incline), falls, falls, falls, and lands on the other side of the gap.

The Mythbusters have done quite a few of these. They also busted the movie "Speed" on the "everybody moved to one side of the bus for the sharp turn" scene.

They are always the most amuzing in the movies that are trying to be serious and get it right and just mupf it.

ps. I spelled "mupf" with a "pf" instead of a double "ff" because the filters apparently think it is offenive. That seems to be a bit extreme.

Pretty nearly every movie involving radiation-caused mutation of some kind. If exposed to radiation, people don't mutate into something else. They may get burns, cancer, etc. but they don't become something else. Their eggs (or sperm) might be changed so that their children may have some unexpected change. I'm still waiting for that movie.

A question rather than a statement of fact, but is it in fact possible to heat a piece of metal in a flame of burning alcohol and wood that it can sear legible details of tools marks into flesh a la Raiders of the Lost Ark?

If you got a metal hot enough - maybe - but thinking in the Mythbusters of mode of the conditions in the movie, Abner's ruby and the Staff of Ra the centre piece was on a table draped over an object and knocked over into a fire where Toht picked it up

Hot enough to burn sure, but can flesh record detailed images that way?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhBVx3Xc6ss

Off the top of my head, I'd say yes, it is possible. I've melted my flesh with hot metal a few times, but have never recorded any details. Were the letters on the metal raised or engraved?

>I've melted my flesh with hot metal a few times, but have never recorded any details. Were the letters on the metal raised or engraved?<

Well that would be the thing to test now?

Just did a quick google search, looks to me like the motiff is in relief but the instructions are engraved.

http://www.yourprops.com/norm-47923bab36a85-Indiana+Jones+And+The+Raiders+Of+The+Lost+Ark+%281981%29.jpeg


P.S - ouch!

get a leg of pork and ......experiment

it'll screw up the crackling, but you could still hve a nice sunday roast out of it!!!!!

Well they used to brand horses with a shaped bit of iron - so flesh burns will be able to retain shapes... The only real question is,

What's the definition of human skin burns - how much detail per square cm will it actually show?

I suspect it's highly dependent on the seriousness of the burn, certainly I've burnt my hand on the grille of a barbeque before and had a lovely set of stripes across the back of my hand - but I suspect if I'd had my hand on the barbeque for a longer time or the metal was much hotter then the 'stripes' would have been bigger and blended together into one big red mark.

Anyone want to volunteer for experiments?

Well they used to brand horses with a shaped bit of iron - so flesh burns will be able to retain shapes... The only real question is:

What's the definition of human skin burns - how much detail per square cm will it actually show?

Precisely - and does the length of time spent heating the object in the movie, and length of exposure, and the method of cooling (dunking hand into snow) - are these replicable as well?

Branding has been a fashion, in body modification circles, for a while, as an alternative to tattoos. I'm not sure exactly how much detail there is, but it would suggest that you can get a reasonably fine detail to display once the swelling goes down.