Elliot's Physics In Film Blog

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...