My Blog for Physics in Film

            For my post I chose to analyze three characters from the X-Men movie franchise as I have seen in it again recently (not just because they were an example) and have not had time to watch Iron Man due to outside circumstances. I am not an expert on all X-Men and related paraphernalia and have really only seen the live-action movies and sporadically played various videos games. I chose to analyze Storm, Nightcrawler, and Iceman.

            Storm has the ability to control weather according to her portrayal in the movies as well as wikipedia. Assuming and accepting that she can manipulate weather with virtually perfect efficiency, where does all that energy come from. If it follows the law of conservation of mass and energy, it cannot just appear from oblivion. It would be highly unlikely that she was the provider of such energy as the average thunder storm puts out 10,000,000 kilowatt-hours (3.6×10¹³ joules) according to wikipedia. Just about 8.6 billion food calories; that is a lot of bagels. Perhaps she can funnel the energy from another place of Earth or perhaps the universe; if so then the temperature there would have to fall acordingly, 3.6×10­¹³ joules to be exact. Perhaps she can funnel energy from another dimension or something. This would still “converse” the energy, but would increase the total energy in our dimension. Or somehow, she can convert mass to energy to fuel her climatic rage. Only a small amount of mass would be needed. For the average T-storm she would need just 400 mg of matter using the famous E=mc² equation. Even stranger, maybe she, or all the X-men can tap into Zero Point Energy…or Midi-chlorians…

            Second is Nightcrawler, who has the power of teleportation. But how does he teleport. Is he somehow able to create and manipulate a wormhole around him. A wormhole would allow him to teleport long distances through things without causing any relativistic side effects. As an alternative theory, perhaps he does not travel at all and transform into a particle of somekind that does not interact with matter and travels as some huge speed. However, traveling at huge speeds would have rather dramatic relativistic side effect.  If he did travel this way, he would appear to come out long after he disappeared because because of his blazing fast travel. Although to him it would appear instantaneous. A wormhole, however, circumvents this problem.

The only other issue is with how does he make this and does it require energy to form. The ability to create wormholes can be explained by his mutant powers but does he need energy to make them? If no energy is required then there is not problem. However, some is likely needed. As with Storm, the energy must come from somewhere and the options listed for Storm could all fit the bill. He may be able to supply the energy himself with food energy perhaps, but as I do not know how much energy it takes to open a wormhole have no further comments on this.

In contrast in Storm is Iceman, manipulator of cold. He must absorb energy instead of releasing it. Given that he has the ability to manipulate energy, where does it all go. If it follows the rules of physics, it must go somewhere. Does it get transported to somewhere else, another dimension perhaps? Maybe he can convert the energy into mass of somekind. If he were to cool down 1 kg of boiling water in a teapot from the boiling point of 100 deg C to 0 deg C to make ice tea, how much matter would be created. The amount of heat transfers comes from the formula Q = mcdeltaT = 1000g*4.186J/g*degC*-100degC = 418,400 J and then to perform the phase change is Q = mL = 333 j/g * 1000g = 333,000 J for a total of 751,400 J which converts to 8.34E-11 kg. That is a very little mass and would go virtually undetected. Maybe Iceman leaves “droppings” of his collected energy whenever he uses his powers or perhaps the energy goes into something harmless like hair growth or to fortify his body.

The movie contact almost gets it right which is surprising because the Palmer guy makes a correct statement earlier in the movie in which he states that if she traveled everyone she knew and loved would be dead. The movie gets it backwards. Elly would have been gone for 18 hours in Earth time and to everyone she would have appeared to stop or perhaps just vanish and reappear 18 hours later. She would have felt only a second or less of time passing.

What should have happened is that the passenger pod should have disappeared, or perhaps faded into disappearance, and remained gone for several years. The government, having hopefully prepared, would leave a small dispatch of rescue-scientists to recover her upon rearrival. The trip to her would have been only several hours or perhaps just a few minutes to her where she learned enough to continue to evolution of Earthican technology or at least learned what to do next. People she knew should be visibly older but only by a little bit and features like hair and accessories should vary. Her love interest should furthermore be equally as dreamy as he was in the past. However this ending would make the whole “you made it up” argument at the end a little less appropriate.

Perhaps an alternative last hump in the movie would have her be gone for a much longer period, like 50 years and having her come to terms with her new life in the future with everyone she knows dead.

The purpose of the warp drives was so the USS Enterprise and other space vehicles could circumvent the current limitations of space-time. Currently we have two problems: it is not possible to exceed the speed of light and the issue with relativity. It takes would take many years going at the fastest speed in order to reach even the closest star. The warp drive allows the crew to be moved long distances without breaking a sweat. Also, somehow, the warp drive allows the crew to avoid traveling to the future faster than they intend. Consequently the faster than light speed travel allows the ship to travel back in time by means of a slingshot around the sun and extend beyond its light cone. The technology also exists that allows communications instantly from light years away.

A second technology would be the beaming up device. Such a device must exist in order to show how one can move from space ship to ground and back again without aid of a smaller transport ship (parking would also not be a problem) as I think I read one of the books that most Star Trek ships do not land on planets. I am NOT an avid Star Trek fan but I do not have anything the show and have seen only tidbits. Therefore I am not that familiar with the transporter. My guess is that it meant to convert matter into energy as light or something. We would know how much energy we are and could theoretical calculates how energetic the beam would be. However the problem lies in how do we convert matter, how do we convert it back, control it as a beam, aim it, preserve life and the order of the matter ect…I bet in a thousand years if any survivors remain they will wonder why we never had beaming up machines as it was “so simple”. If the beamer worked as some sort of magic tractor beam then we could theoretically know how much work and therefore energy would need to be injected assuming 100%. But, once again, we are confronted with the myriad problems: how do they control it, keep the subject from dieing, make the subject essentially incorporeal, aim it, what happens if you get stuck during a power outage ect…In short, the transporter made things able to happen faster in the plot that would otherwise be interrupted by long scenes of people waiting or to simply allow heroes and heroines to get to the action quick.

I thought “Fat Man, Little Boy” was entertaining at least. Now that I think about it, it reminds me of “Pearl Harbor” because both seem to try to entwine a compelling love story with important and rather serious historical events whether its action or political drama. I don’t like it when movies try to make a movie out of events which should in my opinion be separate movies. If you have ever seen the mini-series “Band of Brothers” they make references to their “sweethearts at home” but it is never a dominant storyline and most of the series is mostly military drama.

Anyway, the idea of caged scientists both intrigues and scares me. I would probably be excited to be working on a top secret government project for the good of the country and would not notice I was signing my freedom away for a period of time. One could tell how excited the scientists were in the movie, like boys going to summer camp, boy were they surprised when the camp turned out to be a sweat shop. The scientist became upset when they were being censored, restricted, overworked and regarded as numbers rather than names. Scientists need exchanges of ideas in order to function. They were talking in the movie about how one important idea came out a free discussion.

Working impossible hours constantly for something would definitely make me think about what I was doing. So after the excitement died down, the researchers must have been starting to question in the implications of their research. It would be quite something to have direct involvement in the death of thousands.

As for Dr. Oppenheimer’s God complex, it does make him a effective confident leader. He is respected by his peers, accomplishes tasks and overcomes roadblocks. However, he seems to be difficult with whom to negotiate. General Groves seems a bit monarchial. He did not tell anyone that Germany didn’t have the bomb until way after he got the news and was obsessed with obtaining the device. The thing I do not understand is how come no one made light of the potential peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

I believe nuclear power is the transition energy source we need. It is efficient and a much cleaner source of energy than coal and less environmentally changing than hydroelectric. Plus, we can essentially put one anywhere unlike wind and solar. All those other renewables are nice and should be used when appropriate; but it will be hard to satisfy our thirsty demands with just those.

I believe clean energy and energy dependence outweigh the waste and safety concerns. The waste problem is exaggerated be media and activists in my opinion. We can control the waste of nuclear power plants. With coal, we cannot. Plus, not everyone knows the full extent to how deadly the waste really is. Are they gamma, beta or alpha emitters ect… Plus most do not know how much we actually produce. When I did a project about this for a philosophy class, a statistic I read stated that all the waste we every produced in the US can fit in a football field if stacked 5 meters high. Furthermore, the possibility exists that we can refine the spent rods into new fuels or use them in breeder reactors (although I am not that familiar with that, but I am sure possibilities exist). Uranium is cheap right now so that really is not necessary at the moment. As for safety, the worse accident we have ever had in the US was Three Mile Island where it was relatively under control and there were no deaths that I know of. The accident of Chernobyl was partially due to bad design by the Russians (according to me HS history teacher), kind of like the poor engineering in K13. I think energy independence is worth it, plus we need something reliable to hold us over until we perfect something better and with zero bad waste, like fusion or something. Coal kills far more and damages nature far more than nuclear.

Nuclear weapons are a concern. Refining uranium is not that easy to do in your backyard though so I am are concerned with rogue nations or people who could manage to steal fissile material or existing warheads. The government should regulate it…successfully. Tactile weapons sound like a compromise to use nukes more conventionally. It is like the government is like a small child that just wants JUST ONE cookie before dinner.

Nuclear winter is always a possibility; there exist a relatively large number of nukes, enough to kill us all. However, no human wins if there are none left so I feel that we keep them around so no one uses them, mutually assured destruction. I also think we don’t know how many actually exist anymore since the cold war and the Soviet Union wasn’t probably paying super close attention when it was splitting and I am sure our government knows where every last one is. Banning nukes is one of those bans that have to be enforced to the very last. Just one left could spell destruction if the owner is less than friendly. In short, I feel nuclear holocaust would likely be caused more because of an accident, like a cowboy pilot of a plane that lost its radio riding a nuke as it plummets to Earth. On the bright side, the nuclear winter will cancel out global warming.

I think movies like “The Day After Tomorrow” do open discussions about global warming but at a cost. Since disaster movies often embellish the origins and accelerate the onset of a man-influenced natural disaster people who are intrigued by the movie and start looking at outside material may be upset when they realize the truth and perhaps may even think they have been tricked and will move to the anti-believers side. The truth is scary enough. Movies that have an environmental message should speak from the truth. Hence, my idea of a good global warming disaster movie is one based on the Earth 50 years in the future. This would show consequences of global warming in a truthful manner.

“The Day After Tomorrow” was loosely based on fact. Yes, there would be an ice age from global warming, but it would not happen quite that fast and there would not be giant “anti-hurricanes” fueled by cold air forming to consume the entire northern hemisphere. Furthermore, sea levels would also rise, but not in such a dramatically quick way. I feel that movies such as this and “An Inconvenient Truth” seek to lure people to environmentalism by fear. However the opposite may occur and one may feel tricked or lied to by the films and become more stubborn. I think a better approach would be to inform based on the truth instead of scare tactics. Furthermore, we can work to dispel the evidence contrary. Most of the evidence I have seen cited talk about how the warmest days in the US happened in the 1930s, which is true. However, as a globe, most of the warmest years happened most recently and activists need to make that clear to the public.

Where to begin…

1. First of all, the professor wrote WAY too neatly on the chalk bored, and also everybody knows that scientists are NOT artists.

2. Besides that, would a bird really crack the windshield of car? Birds are relatively light, would they really have the momentum to break a windshield that is designed to withstand much heavier objects.

3. The magnetic field does NOT protect us against microwaves.

4. When the laser drills through the dirt, where does all the dirt go?

5. One word…Unobtainium

6. IF the rays can penetrate lead, shouldn’t they cause immediate cancer in the dude walking behind the lead?

7. I think it is stereotypical of the movie to show Europeans watching soccer.

8. Stone does not conduct electricity that well. And why would the lightning carve the street; wouldn’t the lightning at least strike the tall buildings. I am sure some have metal antennas.

9. There was the masterpiece scene in which they struggled against the unknown force during freefall when they should havebeem weightless.

10. It seems very unlikely that microwaves could destroy the Golden Gate Bridge and most of San Francisco.

11. Would those heat suits even work?

12. Would those giant crystals in the geode shatter that easily, they aren’t rock candy.

13. Unless my knowledge of air conditioning is highly mistaken, wouldn’t it be impossible to thoroughly cool the air in that ship?

14. Why would you trust autopilot on the first journey to the center of the Earth?

15. IF DESTINY stopped it the first time without all the volcanoes erupting, shouldn’t they try it again first before sending all those people down to the depths.

16. Don’t the fuel rods have to be Part of the mass of the bomb in order to contribute to the bomb?

17. And how are they communicating through miles of rock. Secondly, wouldn’t there be just a little bit of delay in the transmission.

I had a couple more than this but I couldn’t read my handwriting…no big loss.

My scenerio is the classic asteroid t-bones the earth. So, we have this asteroid coming towards us, it is traveling at 11,000 m/s and it is the size of a Midwestern state. I will use the asteroid Ceres 1 as a reference (wiki). It has a mass of around 9.43e20 kg. So the asteroid is coming perpendicular to Earth. Therefore I feel that it would only be necessary to slow the asteroid a little bit so that Earth will “be late” for its disaster appointment. So, my goal is to see how much time we would need to slow down the asteroid using a 150 megaton warhead. So, the earth orbits the sun at a velocity of about 29 km/s (source: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/ IlanaEpstein.shtml). The earth is roughly 12,700 km across (wiki). Therefore it would take the Earth 437 seconds to move out of the way of the path. Is a 150 megaton warhead enough to give us that much time?

So let us see how much the warhead would slow the asteroid. 150 megatons is about 6.276e17 J. The asteroid current has (1/2)( 9.43e20 kg)(11,000m/s)^2 or 5.7051500e28 J of kinetic energy. If all the energy of the bomb goes towards decreasing the amount of kinetic energy of the asteroid, then the asteroid would then only be traveling with 5.7051499e28 of kinetic energy. Solving for the new velocity we get 10999.99986 m/s which equates to roughly 1 m/s less speed (and that Is pushing it but there has to be some change) at 10,999 m/s. So let us say that the asteroid is 1 year (31,556,926 s) from impact. This equals a distance of 3.4712618e11 m using the initial velocity of 11,000 m/s. At 10,999 mi/h, it would travel that distance at In 31,559,795 s, this is 2,869 later than it would be without the blast. This is good news for Earth. Even if the change in velocity were less, we could save ourselves from certain doom barring human and/or calculation error. We just have the get a nuke out there as soon as possible and just give it a nudge, the farther out, the better. Problem solved

I chose the scene in Eraser when the bumbling goon picks up John’s shotgun, hence causing the wielder of the rail gun to tag him as John. The bullet sends him flying backwards into the necessary glass window. I used the following site for conversions: http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/units-converter/velocity/calculator.

I will start this discussion with the momentum of the bullet, the star of the show. It was mentioned that the bullet was an aluminum slug traveling near light speed. A bullet usually weighs around 8 g or so. However, those bullets are usually of a heavier metal, so I will say the bullet masses around 5 g, or 0.005 kg. Lightspeed is approximately 3.8E8 m/s. Ignoring relativity, and denoting the path of the bullet to be the positive direction, the momentum of the bullet, or Pb= (0.005 kg)(3.8E8 m.s) = 1.9E6 kg*m/s.

Next, the victim’s momentum. Being the average goon, he likely has a mass around 90 kg. So what should his velocity be when he is hit by the bullet with a momentum of 1.9E6 kg*m/s. Since momentum is conserved his momentum, Pg, g for goon must be equal to Pb because he will be going in the same direction, assuming all the momentum of the bullet is transferred. So given that, the Mg*Vg=1.9E6 kg*m/s, so Vg= (-1.9E6 kg*m/s)/90 kg, kilograms cancel and his new velocity is 21,111 m/s or 47,223 mi/h. Actually, according to Dr. Fragile’s site, escape velocity for the earth is only 11,000 m/s. So the bullet should actually put him into orbit (not necessarily literally). However, the bullet did not transfer all its momentum to him as the bullet passed through him with relatively little visual evidence slowing down (but it’s traveling at the speed of light, how do you see it?). So let’s say the bullet only transferred 0.01 % of its momentum. He would still be going about 2.1 m/s. This would be more reasonable…if the bullet could even be fired at lightspeed. Hence the next subject is below.

The gun and the gunner MUST have the same momentum (albeit negative) of the bullet. Let us say the total mass of the gun combo is 100 kg (10 kg for the gun). Assuming the gunner is attached to the gun, with something like a heavy duty harness or by the sheer grip of his hands, the gun and him would be traveling at the same velocity, and in the opposite (negative direction) of the bullet. So –Pb = Mc*Vc, c for “gun combo”, so Mc = 100 kg and –Pb = -1.9E6*m/s, therefore Vc = 19,000 m/s. Enough to also send the gunner into orbit. The other scenario would be if the gun flew off on its own, transferring no momentum to the gunner. The 10 kg gun would then probably burn up in atmosphere as it slowly drifts towards the horizon at 190,000 m/s.

The three scenes I chose are when the captain falls off the ship, when the cruise ship hits a small sailboat, and the dock collision scene.

For the first scene, I am trying to see how high the deck is from which the captain fell. The quantities I need are the time it takes for him to fall and his acceleration. He fell for about 5 seconds and his acceleration is 9.81 m/s^2­, which is that due to gravity.

In the second scene, I want to know how much momentum the cruise ship lost when it hit the small sailboat (which subsequently exploded). I will need to know the speed and mass of the cruise ship and the mass of the small sailboat. The cruise ship was going around 20 knots at this time, and since one knot is equal to about .514 m/s, the ship was going about 10.28 m/s. An approximate mass of the ship was hard to obtain as most of the data for ships care mostly for the capacity. Anyway, I found that on one site that the weight of the Carnival Destiny is 51000 tons which converts to 4.62E7 kg. For the small sailboat, I looked around the internet for similar boats and estimate the boat is about 10000 pounds, which would be 4,536 kg.

The third scene requires the mass of the boat, the time, and the length of the dock. The mass of the boat is already done. The time was about 3 or 4 minutes but I will stick with 3 minutes, which would be 180 s. Lastly is the length of the dock. After the boat came to a stop, it was completely in the dock, which means the length of the boat is approximately the length of the dock. According the Wikipedia, the ship that was featured in speed was 135 m long, so that must be the length of the dock.

PS: I meant to put that I wanted to see if the dock used would be sufficient to stop the boat. for what it is worth.