Exploring Science in Movies: Finding the Perfect Film for Your Classroom Project

[velocitysc43]

Hello,

I am in search of some movie suggestions that incorporate different concepts such as sound waves, magnetic fields, doppler effect, transmission of light, inverse square law. The movie doesn't need to necessarily incorporate all of those concepts. I am working on a school project and need to demonstrate a scene from a movie and illustrate a few of the concepts that may be applied. I have not seen very many science fiction movies or action movies. I assume that either of those genres would be the easiest to use for examples.

I apologize if I am posting in the wrong forum, as this is technically a homework question, but I've seen other posts about movies here.

Thank you!

 

[jedishrfu]

There's a scene in the old black and white sci-fi movie The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) where Prof Barnard is working on a celestial mechanics problem on the board and Klaatu (Michael Rennie) explains that it is easily solvable with separation of variables and crosses out some terms and further explains that's how his spacecraft works.

Of course, the recent Interstellar movie covers many science concepts with visuals of wormholes, black holes, neutron stars time dilation gravity waves...

You could also consider showing a scene and explaining why its wrong. A common problem is say an explosion happening way in the distance people see the flash and hear the boom simultaneously which is wrong since sound travels so much slower but for dramatic effect the movie director fore goes the physics.

Another is astronauts talking to mission control and the response is immediate instead of a known delay.

For sound waves, perhaps the movie The Hunt for Red October where sonar is used to locate the sub but its drive is so quiet no one can hear it reliably.

 

[velocitysc43]

There's a scene in the old black and white sci-fi movie The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) where Prof Barnard is working on a celestial mechanics problem on the board and Klaatu (Michael Rennie) explains that it is easily solvable with separation of variables and crosses out some terms and further explains that's how his spacecraft works.

Of course, the recent Interstellar movie covers many science concepts with visuals of wormholes, black holes, neutron stars time dilation gravity waves...

You could also consider showing a scene and explaining why its wrong. A common problem is say an explosion happening way in the distance people see the flash and hear the boom simultaneously which is wrong since sound travels so much slower but for dramatic effect the movie director fore goes the physics.

Another is astronauts talking to mission control and the response is immediate instead of a known delay.

For sound waves, perhaps the movie The Hunt for Red October where sonar is used to locate the sub but its drive is so quiet no one can hear it reliably.

Thank you so much. This is very helpful!