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Iron Man 2

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Iron Man is an iconic Marvel character with arguably the most interesting backstory of the main cast of Avengers, but that does not change the fact that Tony Stark is just a regular human with no super strength or durability. Since Tony Stark is just a normal human, there is a problem with the way he pilots his suit, especially the way he does not take his time to decelerate, stop, or change directions. In the scene above, it is obvious that Tony does not even attempt to slow down in any way except when hitting the ground, which is a major problem. The suit that Tony wears does not affect the force exerted on his body, since the only way to decrease the force is to slow down over a longer period of time. The only way the suit can do that is by using the thrusters to accelerate upwards. However, since they are not used in the scene, the physics acting on Tony is not much different than if Tony were without his suit. First off, we must calculate Tony’s momentum. To calculate mo
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The Martian

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The Martian is an interesting take on space movies since in the majority of this film it seems to be pretty accurate in the science category in terms of space travel in the future and how Mark survived on Mars, but that does not mean it was entirely true. With the help of Philip Plait's "Bad Astronomy" and his “Top Ten Examples of Bad Astronomy in Major Motion Pictures” we can assess the accuracy of the physics. Whoosh! Our Hero's spaceship comes roaring out ... This one is very common in movies, but not necessarily unknown since a silent scene in a movie wouldn't appeal to most people. Nevertheless this was in the movie. An example would be the "Iron Man" scene which make a good bit of noise in the near vacuum of space. ...of a dense asteroid field ... This movie did not show any asteroid fields, but the scenes of the ship in between planets were quite empty, so I guess that counts. ...banks hard to the left... Banking is when a vehicle c
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Fat Man & Little boy

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The atomic bomb was the culmination of many great minds and a scientific breakthrough to change the world and cement the United States as the military power that it is today, but was it morally right to develop the atomic bomb in the first place. In my opinion, no it is not morally right to develop such a powerful device. The most prominent argument in support of the development of the bomb is "we need to develop it before the enemy does." The flaw in that logic is that if one nation were to produce and use such a device, not long after development there are bound to be some other nations that get the idea to start producing some as well, and there is no way for that nation to keep the details of how the device was produced a secret for long. If America had not produced the atomic bomb, there is a chance (albeit small) that the world would have never produced such a horrible device in the first place. Science is supposed to be about discovery, education, and making life
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The Day After Tomorrow

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The Day After Tomorrow might not be the best movie physics wise, or just the best movie in general, but it does bring up a very important topic that has become more significant in recent years, which is global warming. Some people believe global warming to be a hoax, but with the insurmountable amount of evidence that viewpoint just seems ignorant to the facts. https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ A greenhouse gas is a gas that traps in solar energy and carbon dioxide is one of the most abundant types of greenhouse gasses. Scientists have tested samples of the atmosphere over the course of hundreds of thousands of years using samples of ice that trapped bubbles of air over all those years (the things that the guys at the start of the movie were drilling for), and that data was recorded, which is displayed on the chart above. There is a reoccurring pattern of a rise and fall of carbon dioxide levels over the years, but they never exceeded 300 parts per million, but because of ev
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Apollo 13

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Weightlessness is an interesting concept but it is a concept that is easily misunderstood. Most people believe weightlessness to be when there is no force of gravity being applied to an object like when an object is far away from any other object, but that is not true. Weightlessness is when an object ONLY experiences the force of gravity. An example of what it feels like to be weightless is right after the highest point on a roller coaster when the coaster goes straight down and all the passengers lift out of there seats for a split second. In a more scientific and mathematical sense a perfect scenario is in any freefall problem where gravity is the only force. An important factor in understanding weightlessness is understanding what weight is. Weight is not the force of gravity, instead weight is the normal force which is the force that the earth pushes up on someone. An example of the difference between the force of gravity and weight is if someone were to exert a force downward
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Avengers: Infinity War

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Avengers is a classic superhero action movie with all of the classic superhero tropes, which means it is bound to have a bountiful supply of ridiculous physics. Today is only about Newton's three laws of motion, so there are a lot of things we are going to leave out but don't worry, there are still many scenes to talk about. In this scene, Thor throws Stormbreaker into a bunch of goons and it keeps going without any decrease in speed. This violates Newton's first law in which an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an outside force. Sormbreaker does not slow down even after it chops dozens of goons that would produce a force against Stormbreaker. Dr. Strange does this all the time so it might slip past you, but how does he levitate. According to Newton's second law F=ma, but Dr. Strange is levitating while gravity is acting on him and he also has mass, which means there should be a force pulling him down, but there is not. The only way for him t
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Armageddon

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Armageddon is an action movie with Bruce Willis which means it has to have perfect physics, well not quite, but it did pose an interesting question; What would we do if an asteroid was going to hit us? Well, NASA has you covered with a bunch of different techniques to prevent a true Armageddon. First off, NASA is always on top of monitoring space to make sure that if an asteroid had a trajectory that would even come close to earth, they would investigate. To spot asteroids, many pictures are taken, more specifically, a few pictures are taken of a static shot of space a couple minutes apart, then a computer will scan for any moving objects. After an object is spotted the trajectory is calculated with the given data. After that, there are many ways of dealing with an asteroid, but what I will be talking about is Asteroid Laser Ablation, which is basically shooting the asteroid with a really big laser. The whole purpose of the laser is to heat up part of the asteroid so hot tha
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