FYSE 130 - Physics In Film

Armageddon: The End of Physics (and life) as we Know it Armageddon is one of those movies that everyone knows about I think? There's no doubt that it's at least a half decent movie and one worthy of watching if you've got a spare 2 hours. However, the whole "let's blow up an asteroid with a nuke and have the two halves of the asteroid miss us entirely" thing, is utterly false and impossible to do. In actual practice, one nuke would barely separate each of the asteroid pieces a football field apart from one another by the time it reaches the movies "0 barrier". However, it does pose an interesting question. In the event that earth does come into the crosshairs of an "extinction level" asteroid, what on earth (no pun intended) do we do? The Plan So, although throwing nukes at the thing last minute would give a great last-minute fireworks show, it won't work. If we are going to actually hit this thing with nukes, we need to be able ...

Mission Impossible III: No Physics Required So, in my eyes, "Mission Impossible III" seemed like a hot mess. Some of the scenes where extremely cringe worthy, there were plot holes the size of the grand canyon, and Tom Cruise seemed to be the only half decent actor in my opinion. However, the main gripe I have with this movie is much nerdier than that. Some of the physics in this movie are appalling. Some are normal Hollywood cliches, some are downright crazy stunts, and some are just downright illogical at best. I'm very interested in being able to determine whether or not these scenes really were accurate. Even though we know that, because they are action movie scenes, some of them are inherently incorrect. None the less, listing out the information that's given to use would definitely shed some light on whether or not some of these scenes are even physically possible in the real world. Shanghai Fulcrum   The first scene I want to touch on, screams for ph...