What is your biggest science pet peeve in movies?

[todofwar]

3 hours ago, p1t1o said:

Aww Jeeze, speaking as a chemist, I couldn't disagree more!

A large proportion of my non-sciency friends advertised it to me in the same way "Its so good, and its full of chemistry Pete! You'd love it!"

Yeah sure, it has *some* chemistry in it, but its not exactly education-grade. I gave it a go, I tried it, watched a handful of episodes. And lo and behold, he picks up a bag of mercury fulminate and throws it at some gangster or other in order to escape a sticky situation.

And yet, the bag of fulminate failed to explode as it was carried around, jostled, kept in pockets, on the seat of a moving car etc. That sh** is sensitive, that was the whole point.

Maybe it has more good chemistry in it than most programs, but this really put me off, especially when the chemistry was so hyped up. I was expected to be impressed, not to spot a glaring error in the first sitting.

 

(And apart from imperfect chemistry, lets say the fulminate issue was fine, it also demonstrates extremely ill-advised behavior when working with explosives, y'know, if you want to live.)

 

PS: I would add though, that as a scientist, it is heartening to see at least some good science used in mainstream media in an entertaining fashion. I dont hold liking breaking bad against anyone, even chemists

I think I and others in my program were so impressed with it because we saw it without the hype. I can imagine if someone had pitched it to me as being an accurate chemistry show I would have gone in with more critical eyes. So, I looked passed the fact that Walt and Jesse casually threw around HF without dying, and instead was impressed that they correctly pointed out you can't use it in a glass container. And graded on the curve that is hollywood, I'd call it a solid B+. 

[NSEP]

On 16-11-2016 at 3:40 PM, Aperture Science said:

On the subject of air battles:

The maneuver at the end of the video, IT HURTS

It somehow looks plausible to me. I remember having such maneuvers while playing KSP. In not entirely sure though.

[wumpus]

On 11/16/2016 at 1:17 AM, DDE said:

Most of sci-fi authors failed Physics 101. I think if they tried to comply with orbital mechanics, it would have been worse.

Think about xkcd's "orbital mechanics knowledge" cartoon.  Pretty much everybody on this forum has stronger grasp of orbital mechanics than people with actual physics degrees (just don't ask me to go back to the Maxwell Equations).  I remember the time that I figured out that even in Moon is a Harsh Mistress, RAH had to carefully palm the issue of the Moon's escape velocity and the efficiency of lunar lifters to make the orbital bombardment of Earth sound reasonable.

Even "the good ones" often botch it.  Not everyone is Arthur C. Clarke (thank God, his characters were horrible).  Hopefully if word gets out about a writer working on stuff in orbit, somebody at a con will pull the writer aside, hand him a steam code and insist on landing on the Mun before writing another word.

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, NSEP said:

It somehow looks plausible to me. I remember having such maneuvers while playing KSP. In not entirely sure though.

It's kind of like a stall turn, but not really.

The show him cutting the throttle and pulling up. So that will bleed airspeed very quickly. He would obviously have to start the rotation while he still has control authority, then let his momentum continue the rotation while he is stalled, then pick up airspeed again in order to keep from falling out of the sky. I think he would have to lose a lot of altitude. And I doubt a real P-51 could do it without coming apart.

Edited November 17, 2016 by mikegarrison

[Mitchz95]

This one is very minor, but dammit, I hate it when astronauts are depicted wearing white or red EVA suits on Mars. I know, the Buzz Light-year look is kind of dorky, but realistically anybody walking around in a red/beige environment is gonna want to be wearing green so they stand out.

[tater]

11 hours ago, NSEP said:

It somehow looks plausible to me. I remember having such maneuvers while playing KSP. In not entirely sure though.

Looks absurd to me. You can certainly blow a lot of E pulling a high-g climbing turn, but Hollywood has to turn it into something that happens in a couple plane lengths.

If the Bf-109 did;t want to blow his E, he'd Chandelle, and while the P-51 might end up behind... doesn't matter, he'd be low and slow by comparison, and the 109 could set up another pass.

[Sereneti]

On 29.4.2016 at 4:14 PM, todofwar said:

Ant Man had a really horrendous one. They explicitly state the technology relies on shrinking the distance between atoms. So, there should be a limit to how small you can get. Yet at one point they talk about going "subatomic", which should be impossible by the movie's rules. Not to mention the whole "mass is conserved" thing which was supposed to be one of the reasons Ant Man can do some serious damage when shrunk gets haphazardly applied. Internal consistency, that's all I ask

And another thing that has some spoilers:

  Hide contents

At the end of the movie he goes "subatomic", and we see the worst depiction of basically everything at the micro, nano, and femto scales.

 

yes, ant-man bugs me a lot.

If he save his whole mass, the whole mass (let me say 50 kg) are aplied to a areal of 0,2*0,2cm...
thats 0,04 cm²
with 50 kg thats 1250kg/cm²

 

[p1t1o]

@NSEP @tater @mikegarrison

The manouver that the P51 pulls off seems visually to imply static instability in the pitch axis - he flips his tail flat into the airflow - And if he was at stall, Im not sure if a "stall turn" could be done in this axis with a stable design.

Of course it goes without saying that even if it were, slowing to a stall would be the last thing you would do in a dogfight.

 

[Firemetal]

The orbital mechanics. In Star Wars, they are flying these tiny fighters like planes on a planet. Seriously! And how the heck does the Death Star stay in one place? Didn't Obi Won say ( is that how you spell his name?) "That's no moon!"

And in  No Man's Sky, you just  fly straight up out of the atmosphere! When space ships fly straight up, It annoys the heck out of me.

So that is mine.

Fire

[DDE]

9 minutes ago, Firemetal said:

The orbital mechanics. In Star Wars, they are flying these tiny fighters like planes on a planet. Seriously!

Newtonian physics and space made of WD40, not orbital mechanics. They use hovering tech to make orbital mechanics go away.

[Hary R]

On 18/11/2016 at 4:16 PM, Firemetal said:

Seriously! And how the heck does the Death Star stay in one place? Didn't Obi Won say ( is that how you spell his name?) "That's no moon!"

 

Because in Hollywoodverse, space stations, moon, planets and stars are static objet in the sky. note how even in recent movies you just go straight up to a station. or a station looks like it's in a geostationary orbit (by that i mean it always have the same side of the planet below it) while being very close to the planet. 

Edited November 21, 2016 by Hary R
spelling

[Firemetal]

Just now, DDE said:

Newtonian physics and space made of WD40, not orbital mechanics. They use hovering tech to make orbital mechanics go away.

Well. All this plane-like maneuvering must be changing their orbit! Oh wait they don't have one!

Don't get me wrong. I love Star Wars. I love a bunch of the other movies that defy physics. But ever since I started playing KSP, I've picked these up. Like in space 1999! A nuke sends the moon out of the Earth's SOI!

If we didn't have movies and books and games like these, there wouldn't  be sci-fi but it bothers my OPD! (Obsessive physics disorder)

Fire

[DDE]

Just now, Firemetal said:

All this plane-like maneuvering must be changing their orbit! Oh wait they don't have one!

Outside of law orbit, at small distances and in the short term, orbital mechanics don't matter that much.

Just be sure to get back into a stable orbit once you complete your evasion maneuvers!

[p1t1o]

To be fair, craft in sci-fi production such as Star Wars or No Mans Sky often have propulsion units that display torch-drive-like properties, ie: they are capable of providing accelerations measured in whole Gees for an unlimited amount of time and are not limited (at least in the time/distance scales observed) by internal fuel or mass.

With craft like this, it would be possible to "fly straight up to space" and to manouver however the heck you want without worrying about orbits.

If you hack together an engine like this in KSP you will be able to do the same thing.

So at least it is internally consistent, if not realistic in any way.

Oh, and is it not implied that the DeathStar is more of a mobile craft, than a "station"? It manouvers rapidly around the system of [ewok planet] and is clearly capable of travelling between systems - so you can assign it the same torch-drive-like properties.

I like to pretend that the reason the [starwars] craft always seem to have "wings" (or something that looks like solar panels...) is that they are some kind technology-so-advanced-as-to-be-indistinguishable-from-magic type of technology that acquires "lift" or "grip" if you like, from space itself, resulting in their dogfight-like flight. It does make a kind of sense as if you did acquire this technology, you would literally be able to run rings around craft constrained by more Newtonian manouvers.

[ZachIsCheese]

Laptops that last for ever on a charge. Seriously if you are going to have a laptop, at least show it being charged when its sitting at a desk. Otherwise I will call you out on it every time. Otherwise, it would be the whole thing around space ships. Its soooo bad.

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, p1t1o said:

To be fair, craft in sci-fi production such as Star Wars or No Mans Sky often have propulsion units that display torch-drive-like properties, ie: they are capable of providing accelerations measured in whole Gees for an unlimited amount of time and are not limited (at least in the time/distance scales observed) by internal fuel or mass.

With craft like this, it would be possible to "fly straight up to space" and to manouver however the heck you want without worrying about orbits.

If you hack together an engine like this in KSP you will be able to do the same thing.

So at least it is internally consistent, if not realistic in any way.

Oh, and is it not implied that the DeathStar is more of a mobile craft, than a "station"? It manouvers rapidly around the system of [ewok planet] and is clearly capable of travelling between systems - so you can assign it the same torch-drive-like properties.

I like to pretend that the reason the [starwars] craft always seem to have "wings" (or something that looks like solar panels...) is that they are some kind technology-so-advanced-as-to-be-indistinguishable-from-magic type of technology that acquires "lift" or "grip" if you like, from space itself, resulting in their dogfight-like flight. It does make a kind of sense as if you did acquire this technology, you would literally be able to run rings around craft constrained by more Newtonian manouvers.

Yes, orbits are only for things that are unpowered. Anything that is constantly thrusting will not stay in a standard Kepler orbit.

[Firemetal]

20 hours ago, NSEP said:

It somehow looks plausible to me. I remember having such maneuvers while playing KSP. In not entirely sure though.

I don't think so. He was going at supersonic speeds so he is going to have to do a full loop to kill off that velocity.

Fire

[p1t1o]

15 minutes ago, Firemetal said:

supersonic speeds

Is that so? Is it explicit from the movie? Because that is another impossible thing. Or at the very least, extremely ill-advised (As loss of control is almost inevitable [in aircraft of this ilk], before anyone says anything about near-vertical dives).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mach_number

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_drag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_tuck

 

Edited November 18, 2016 by p1t1o

[monstah]

3 hours ago, Firemetal said:

Obi Won say ( is that how you spell his name?)

Hey, weren't you supposed to post on this thread instead:

/sarcasm

[wumpus]

6 hours ago, p1t1o said:

@NSEP @tater @mikegarrison

The manouver that the P51 pulls off seems visually to imply static instability in the pitch axis - he flips his tail flat into the airflow - And if he was at stall, Im not sure if a "stall turn" could be done in this axis with a stable design.

Of course it goes without saying that even if it were, slowing to a stall would be the last thing you would do in a dogfight.

Both the X-29 and X-31 were designed to do that (post stall manuevering, presumably researching for dogfighting).  The key being to get to a stall via climbing, never by slowing down (well, losing energy; you might not be going fast after your climb).  Of course, I'm fairly certain such tricks aren't possible in a P51 (the X-planes use directed jets and multiple computers).

I'm not sure the Air Force decided to use such capability in non-research planes: even if both your enemy and his wingman were busy, you would be a sitting duck for anti-aircraft fire.  But somebody at least built a plane that could do those things.

[Firemetal]

1 minute ago, wumpus said:

Both the X-29 and X-31 were designed to do that (post stall manuevering, presumably researching for dogfighting).  The key being to get to a stall via climbing, never by slowing down (well, losing energy; you might not be going fast after your climb).  Of course, I'm fairly certain such tricks aren't possible in a P51 (the X-planes use directed jets and multiple computers).

I'm not sure the Air Force decided to use such capability in non-research planes: even if both your enemy and his wingman were busy, you would be a sitting duck for anti-aircraft fire.  But somebody at least built a plane that could do those things.

...Ok...

Anyone want to recreate it in KSP?

10 minutes ago, monstah said:

Hey, weren't you supposed to post on this thread instead:

/sarcasm

Oh I'm sorry! I thought this was the "One Sentence You Could Say To Annoy an Entire Fan Base?" Thread! I'll look at the title next time!  

More sarcasm.  

Fire

[p1t1o]

6 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Both the X-29 and X-31 were designed to do that (post stall manuevering, presumably researching for dogfighting).  The key being to get to a stall via climbing, never by slowing down (well, losing energy; you might not be going fast after your climb).  Of course, I'm fairly certain such tricks aren't possible in a P51 (the X-planes use directed jets and multiple computers).

I'm not sure the Air Force decided to use such capability in non-research planes: even if both your enemy and his wingman were busy, you would be a sitting duck for anti-aircraft fire.  But somebody at least built a plane that could do those things.

They are able to do this precisely because the designs are aerodynamically unstable - something that was not possible to fly before the advent of the necessary electronics, without which such aircraft would fall out of the sky.

Almost all modern fighters are designed around instability these days, apart from opening up the post-stall envelope, they enhance responsivness and especially high-mach manouverability (arguably more important than close-in agility these days as well).

It is to the degree where were a modern fighter (such as the F22 or RAF Typhoon), to have a complete fly-by-wire failure (something I am sure is very difficult to achieve) the resultant uncontrolled instability and uncommanded manouvers would be intense enough to break the aircraft apart.

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, Sereneti said:

yes, ant-man bugs me a lot.

If he save his whole mass, the whole mass (let me say 50 kg) are aplied to a areal of 0,2*0,2cm...
thats 0,04 cm²
with 50 kg thats 1250kg/cm²

I was thinking about such things when was reading/playing fantasy things and drawing spell diagrams.
The way which seems to me more or less reasonable is that in fact the shrunken one isn't really shrunken, but this is like he is in a kinda space pocket.
Himself he has usual size, consists of the same amount of atoms and so on. His counterpart too, but in his own region of space.
Now imagine they are from opposite sides of a toy balloon.

Spoiler

The bigger one is like hand, the smaller one is like finger. You push them together, they meet. The contact spot is the same, but for one of them the contact spot is small relative to his own room, for another one this spot fills all his vision field.

[James Kerman]

Ant Man would have been better if he asphyxiated on being shrunk due to the fact his lungs are now smaller than oxygen molecules.

[p1t1o]

11 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

Ant Man would have been better if he asphyxiated on being shrunk due to the fact his lungs are now smaller than oxygen molecules.

That's why he wore the special mask