Physics in Film

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

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

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