Mainstream movies are part of every teenager’s culture. Volker Krasemann of Suffield Academy finds that using movie clips to illustrate both faulty and accurate physics concepts plays an essential role in grabbing his students' attention. He chooses clips where movie makers have taken a bit too much liberty with a physics concept to introduce a topic or to assess the students' understanding of the complex material. He also uses clips displaying accurate physics concepts to convey such concepts in a way his students are likely to understand.  

Physics Bloopers 

In the film Edge, a main character makes a compass out of the hand of a watch by placing it on a leaf, and it then miraculously turns north.   Students come to understand that the essential part of a compass is magnetism and without it a watch can not serve as a compass.  In the Disney film Snow White, when Dopey throws his bag of tools into a shed he is thrown in with the tools as well, presumably from the force of the throw.  The students discover that this clearly defies Newton’s Third Law of Motion. 

Volker also uses movies to let students solve problems, the most memorable one using the scene in the movie Speed when a bus jumps across a gap (with no incline) on a freeway. Volker stops the clip when the bus is in the air and asks: “How would this scene end if the bus were to follow the laws of physics rather then the movie script?” The movie provides all the necessary information (speed and width of the gap) to solve the problem.  To solve the problem, the students must remember that every object drops as soon as it leaves the ramp or launch pad and that gravity is then the only force acting upon that object. “With this exercise I am looking for those students who still think that with enough speed the bus will make it across the gap, because those are the ones who still do not understand the concept," says Volker. This analysis of Speed is done toward the end of the unit on projectile motion and this exercise serves as a formative assessment tool making clear who gets it and who doesn’t. 

Physics Done Right 

Volker also shows movies that demonstrate correct physics concepts, the prime example being Apollo 13, which contains several good sequences on apparent weight, inertia, and uniform motion.  Students are also always impressed by scenes from the TV series House. The scenes Volker highlights involve the use of an MRI machine when metallic objects are present and get ripped out of the body of the patient. In one scene, a tattoo containing metallic particles gets extracted by the MRI, and in another, a bullet which is stuck in a corpse comes loose. The scenes help to clarify Volker’s discussion on magnetism. 

Volker finds that students enjoy these little interludes and he uses them extensively, especially during his 70 minute classes. When Volker puts clips together, he carefully edits them and stores them on his computer so students are not tempted to ask, “Can we watch more of the movie?” Isolating the relevant physics concept helps to keep the class focused and on task.  He finds the scene analysis works well at the beginning or the end of a unit.

Volker Krasemann is science department chair at Suffield Academy. He teaches physics to both 9th and 12th graders. This coming year he is teaching an elective on Pseudoscience  and is sure to incorporate more real and false physics clips from a range of media sources.