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Physics in films
--Bad, and good science in movies
offers solid lessons in physics
--Physics educators trade tactics for teaching at Austin
conference
While you're watching the latest movie hero fly through
space or speed through the streets to bring lawbreakers
to justice, Costas Efthimiou may be noting if the hero
or villain's breaking the laws of physics.
Dr. Efthimiou teaches Physics at the University of
Central Florida in Orlando. He's found the actions and
reactions of today's action flicks can be great teaching
tools for physics-phobic students.
"They come to class the first day and they always
ask is it going to be hard is it going to have a lot
of calculations and formulas?"
The professor's formula for reducing those fears was
to look to the movies as physics demonstrations in un-real
life.
"For example, we used 'Speed 2'," he says,
"That gave us the opportunity to discuss acceleration,
deceleration and motion in general."
The Sylvester Stallone cop thriller "Tango and
Cash" helped show how electricity behaves when
the heroes dangled from a power line without getting
shocked. (They weren't grounded.) The hyper-kinetic
actions of Arnold Schwartzenegger in "Eraser"
offered lessons in momentum, conservation of momentum,
free fall, and weightlessness.
Now Dr. Efthimiou will help other teachers try his
approach this Monday when he speaks to a session of
the American Association
of Physics Teachers. AAPT will hold its' national
meeting in Austin, Texas January 11th through the 15th.
The meeting will cover a wide range of issues and tactics
in science education and feature talks by two Nobel
Prize winning physicists: Dr. Stephen Weinberg of the
University of Texas and Dr. John Robert Schrieffer of
Florida State University.
But before students have a prayer of reaching those
dizzying heights of achievement, they have to make it
through freshman physics. That's where Dr. Efthimiou
and movies like "Armageddon" can help. It
offered lessons in motion, astronomy and rockets but
for solid science Dr. Efthimiou prefers the other "killer
rock" film of that year: "Deep Impact".
Dr. Efthimiou says when a comet collides with Earth
in "Deep Impact" , "they have a very
nice sequence of tidal effects; but the students don't
like that movie as well as Armageddon. They love Armageddon,"
he says. His theory is a more heroic plot line trumped
sound science in the students' affections. Armageddon's
heroes managed to keep the asteroid from hitting Earth.
In Deep Impact the comet did hit.
Debunking Hollywood's science mistakes can offer valuable
lessons too but some of the most accurate science is
in a film 35 years old: Stanley Kubrick's "2001".
In that film rockets are silent, (sound can't travel
in the vacuum of space) and a spinning segment of the
spacecraft uses centrifugal force as a realistic way
to achieve artificial gravity.
Dr. Efthimiou's approach is filling his classes. He
says between two classes last fall about 600 students
learned serious physics with some Hollywood flair.
Meeting information:
American Association
of Physics Teachers
January 11-15
Renaissance Austin Hotel
9721 Arboretum Blvd.
Austin, TX 78759
meeting
agenda
Dr. Efthimiou's session: "Physics in Films"
will be 11:15 am Monday in the Trinity-B room.
Nobel Prize winners Steven Weinberg and Robert Schrieffer
will speak on their lives in physics from 10:30 to
Noon on Monday in Grand Ballroom-A
Dr.
Weinberg bio
Dr.
Schrieffer bio
Contact:
Craig Smith
Media Coordinator
301-209-3088
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