Elliot's Physics In Film Blog

      If you have seen any of the Fast and Furious movies, then you would know that they are filled with ridiculous stunts. If you have seen the whole franchise, though, then you have probably noticed that the group of thuggish street racers, inexplicably become somewhat of trained, super-agent-like, fighting machines. By the seventh movie in the series, of course, the crew basically goes from street racing for money, to becoming a super team, pulling off insanely ridiculous missions.   In Fast and Furious 7, Dom( Vin Diesel) and his crew take a trip to Abu Dhabi to recover a speeddrive. The only problem is they have to steal it from a billionaire's skyscraper penthouse. They gain access to the billionaire's house by attending his party, but like always, things go wrong. A commotion of fist fighting, and gunfire errupt, and  Dom and Brian( Paul Walker), who are in desperate need for an escape plan, figure their only option is to drive out of the skyscraper into another. Using

The moral positions of the scientists in “Fat Man and Little Boy” and “Gojira” are pretty similar. In “Fat Man and Little Boy”, we follow the scientists involved the the Manhattan Project. After the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, American scientists are instructed to find out how to create and use an atomic bomb. At first the scientists are excited by the intriguing concept. In the beginning, the task is thought of to be impossible, however, as they begin to make progress, they start to realize that what they are trying to do is very possible. This causes many of the scientists to recognize the potential dangers of the bomb. When knowing the destruction power of their creation, they question whether or not it is humane, even when at war, to release such havoc. They didn’t know if they should just put their morals aside and do their research, or refuse to work on the project completely. While many had internal conflict, there were two main sides; one side thought it wasn’t morally ri

The source I read is the Climate page of the NASA website. It lists tons of ways how climate change is shown to be happening. It starts off by saying the satellites orbiting Earth and other technological advancements have allowed scientists to see climate on a global level, and how there is clear evidence of it. Global temperature rise is one of them. The surface temperature of earth has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century, and continues to rise today. Most of this warming has occurred in the past 35 years. This can be directly related to the advancement of technology and its use of fuels that emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Sixteen out of the seventeen warmest years occurred since 2001. Along with warming surface temperature is the warming ocean temperatures. The earth’s oceans have absorbed much of this heat increasing its temperature by 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969. With the earth’s surface and ocean temperatures rising, it has caused glac

I chose to read the “Physics of Superheroes”. The chapter I decided to summarize is Chapter 1: Forces and Motion. In this chapter, the superhero of focus is one of my favorites; superman. At the beginning, the author talks about the concept pertaining to Superman’s creation, and the “explanations” behind his powers. The original Superman had only a few powers and the  justification of them was his Kryptonian heritage. Since his home planet had a stronger gravitational pull than Earth, his DNA was supposed to have encoded the development of impenetrable skin and stronger muscles.                     The ability to fly was introduced in later versions of Superman. Along with this came other various abilities such as, heat vision, x-ray vision, super hearing, and super breath. By this time the laws of physics did not apply to Superman and the creators needed a new explanation. This time, the reasoning behind his abilities was the fact that Earth orbited a yellow sun and Superman’s h

In the movie Armageddon, a team of misfit oil drillers become world's last hope for survival. After an asteroid, the size of Texas, comes barreling towards Earth, humanity is given only 18 days to come up with a solution. Teaming up with NASA, the drillers plan to fly to space. Their goal is to land on the asteroid, drill an 800 ft hole in it, then plant a nuclear bomb inside. The objective is to blow up the asteroid into 2 pieces, projecting them on path to that is out of harms way. This plan would not work because the two pieces would not have enough time to separate, and they would still crash into our home planet, destroying everything. Since this catastrophe is bound to happen at some point, I have thought of a solution that might be a little more effective. Since the asteroid is made of iron, a very magnetic material, my plan would be to use the strongest, non-destructive, electromagnet to slowly decrease it's velocity, then deflect the asteroid back into space. The wor

This was the first Mission Impossible movie I have actually sat down and watched. Overall I was entertained the whole time and enjoyed the over-the-top action stunts. While these stunts were exciting to watch, there is always the question of if they are possible or realistic. The first scene I will be analyzing is the scene where Ethan Hunt goes to save his wife and calls Benji to find out where she is. Benji tracks her location to learn that she is in a building 1 mile away, or about 1609 meters. The time it takes Ethan to get there is roughly 110 seconds. This would mean Ethan would have had to been running at an astounding 14.62m/s, or 33mph. This is an absurd measurement due to the fact that Olympic runner, Usian Bolt, who is considered the fastest man on Earth, peaks at around 28 mph. The next scene I will be analyzing is the moment when secret agent, Ethan Hunt, decides the only way to retrieve the "rabbits foot", is to swing across from one skyscraper to another in