Physics in the media

 

 

 

Need some trendy academic references to popular culture? Look below: so far I’ve got comic books, TV, movies, computer games, and pop history.

• The Physics of Superheroes.
  • Homepage and interview with the author.
  • Peer-reviewed study of X-ray vision.
• The Physics of Star Trek.
  •  Author’s homepage.
• Physics in computer games.
  All video games have to have reasonably accurate simulations of physics to make the player’s interactions with the world seem believable.  Most people concentrate on the storyline or strategy, but there’s a lot of underlying physics modeling of light propagation (and surface textures) as well as dynamics.  The actual underlying physics is not far beyond the level of Physics 16/17; the challenge is to find approximations that allow a single CPU to perform the necessary simulations in real time as the game is played.
  •  Spore.  Most of the science hype associated with the game has to do with evolutionary biology and anthropology, but it is built around physics simulations.
    • Good: physics simulators developed for the game.
    • Bad:  center of mass violation.
  • World of Goo.  A game that is pretty much pure physics, and mostly static equilibrium puzzles at that.  Based on an open-source physics engine ODE (get the pun?) for the simulations.  If you want to build your own physics simulator, follow this advice; it looks to me like it would take many years.
• Bad physics
  • in movies.  Critique of common physics mistakes in movies with individual movie ratings.
  • throughout history.  A recent book looks at the history of bad science (from naïve to corrupt).  Reviewed here.