In the realm of Hollywood

PK Thiruvikraman

Teachers usually despair that their students are more interested in watching a movie than sitting in a classroom; they find a novel more exciting than a textbook. As teachers, we feel that we are fighting a losing battle to grab the attention of the student in the face of competition from various sources of entertainment which have mushroomed in this digital age.

If we cannot beat the competition, maybe we should join them. In other words can we use the fascination of children for movies and novels in a constructive manner to learn science? I will try to present some examples of how this can be done in the classroom. Needless to say, such an effort has already been undertaken by others and I will refer to these other efforts also in this article.

Examples of movies which can be used to spark debate and interest in the classroom:
In the opening scene of the English movie “Golden Eye”, James Bond attempts to take off in a small plane from the top of a cliff. But even as the plane is accelerating, James Bond is pushed out of the plane. The pilotless plane has insufficient velocity to take off and falls off the edge of the cliff.

James Bond jumps off the cliff and manages to catch up with the plane. Is such a thing possible in reality? After all, we are all taught that, under gravity, all bodies fall with the same acceleration. But, maybe things are not so simple: we usually ignore the effects of air resistance. This scene can be used to start a debate on concepts in Mechanics (projectile motion, terminal velocity, air resistance etc.)

In the final scene of the movie “Vishwaroopam” (Tamil/Telugu/Hindi), a terrorist tries to trigger a bomb by making a call to a mobile phone which will activate the bomb. The hero of the movie recognizes the danger and uses a metallic container (actually a microwave oven!) to shield the mobile phone. The metallic container prevents the electromagnetic waves from reaching the cell phone and hence the bomb does not get activated. This can be demonstrated more easily in the classroom by wrapping an aluminium foil around the cell phone. Of course the concepts involved here are usually taught only in higher classes (intermediate/class XII).

Very simple concepts can be illustrated using movies as well; for example, the well-known “Stroboscopic effect”, due to which the wheels of cars or chariots shown in movies appear to be either static or spinning in the opposite direction. A related question can be about how “slow motion” effects are generated in movies or television.

Another movie which captured the attention of children was the movie “Jurassic Park”. In this movie, it is shown that dinosaurs which have been extinct for nearly 65 million years are brought to life using the DNA obtained from some fossils (it is shown that mosquitoes which used to suck the blood of dinosaurs were preserved in amber and this blood contains the DNA of dinosaurs). Would this be really possible, even given the recent developments in Genetic Engineering? It will be difficult to answer this question with school-level biology, but it can still form an interesting topic for discussion. The movie “Jurassic Park” was based on a novel of the same name and the novel in fact has more details about the science behind “Jurassic Park”.

The threat to earth from asteroids or comets has been shown in movies like “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact”. In all these movies, the earth is threatened by the imminent impact of a large asteroid or comet. The solution which is suggested is to blast the asteroid into pieces using nuclear weapons. Many scientists have dismissed this as an incorrect strategy. Even if the asteroid were to be blasted into pieces, the centre of mass of the pieces would still be travelling towards the earth and different parts of the earth would be bombarded with pieces of the asteroid. However, it may not be so easy to dismiss this strategy. If the asteroid were to be broken into many small pieces outside the earth’s atmosphere, then definitely there is greater chance of each individual piece burning up when it enters the earth’s atmosphere. The threat to our future due to global warming has been portrayed in the movie “The Day After Tomorrow”. An interesting aspect of this movie is that many of the effects of global warming like greater frequency and intensity of storms are shown clearly. At the end it is shown that the earth enters an ice age due to global warming. A paradox which needs to be understood!

Using incorrect science in movies/novels to spark a debate
Sometimes either due to ignorance or other factors, many scenes in movies and novels “violate” the laws of science, i.e., what is portrayed in these scenes is not in accordance with the laws of science. Even such instances of incorrect science can be used to spark discussions in class. I give a few examples of such instances:

1. In the movie Mackenna’s Gold it is shown that the shadow of a cliff lengthens as the sun rises higher in the sky. Such scenes can be shown in the classroom and students can be asked to spot the mistakes in the scenes.
2. Sometimes, the mistakes can be very subtle and not as simple as the one in Mackenna’s Gold. In the novel The Invisible Man by the famous science fiction writer H.G. Wells, the main character of the novel becomes invisible as the refractive index of his body becomes equal to that of the surroundings. The author had overlooked the fact that such an “invisible man” would also be blind as the refractive index of his eyes would equal that of the surroundings and hence they would not be able to focus light on to the retina! This flaw (and also the next one) has been pointed out in the entertaining book Physics for Entertainment by Ya. Perelman.
3. In the novel From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, people are placed inside a capsule which is then fired towards the moon using a cannon. It takes some analysis to show that to reach the escape velocity of the earth, the cannon would have to be really long (which may not be practically possible) and even if such a cannon was constructed the acceleration needed to attain that velocity would kill the astronauts in the capsule. In this case students can actually be asked to do numerical calculations to show that this method of sending astronauts into space is not feasible. Of course, Jules Verne wrote this novel in 1865 when space travel was yet to become a practical reality.

It is recognized by teachers all over the world, that practical demonstrations of experiments and natural phenomena kindle the interest and improve the understanding of students more than monotonous lectures. This can be further exploited in a constructive manner if we use movies and popular literature.

There are many books which deal with the approach mentioned here. Apart from the book Physics for Entertainment which has been mentioned above, another book which deals with science (or the lack of it!) in movies and television shows is Exploring Science through Science Fiction by Barry B. Loukkala. Some portions of this book can be accessed through Google books. This book is meant for college students, but teachers can definitely discuss some of the examples mentioned in this book in their classes. One interesting aspect of this book is that it does not simply mention examples from movies or books, but mentions numerical calculations which readers can do on their own and draw conclusions. Of course, children are obsessed not just with movies but also with sports and computer games. Even these can be used constructively to educate them about the principles of science. But describing examples from these two domains would require a separate article!

The author has been teaching physics for nearly 14 years at Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Hyderabad. Among many other things he is also interested in movies and sports and using them to teach physics. He can be reached at thiru@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in.