The Worst Tech Mistakes in TV and Movies

[BillLake]

OK, So you wrote a article with errors about the errors in movies. So here are two errors I see, any one else see some more? 1) When you’re shot by a bullet, you don’t actually get knocked backwards: really, ever seen anyone shot with a Barrett 50 cal, 12 gauge shotgun, .45 cal 1911? These weapons will knock you off your feet and maybe some will take a limb or two with them. I doubt if anyone would choose to be shot by any of these weapons instead of being punched by a boxer. Find a image of someone shot with a 50 cal and consider if Mike Tyson ever managed to hit someone hard enough to do that to somone. 2) A foot pedal, for example, is not as good as a mouse for text editing: perhaps your mouse is very well trained but my mouse can not actually edit any text or I would have had him write this for me.

 

[Guest]

Actually, there is some truth to the idea that clones may degrade faster due to problem in the cloning process. Dolly the sheep, for instance, suffered from several disorders in later life that were not due to her genetic code. Other (though not all) clones have suffered similar fates. Yes, clones are genetic twins, but at least two things keep them from being exactly the same. 1) Not all of your DNA is contained within your chromosomes. Mitochondrial DNA is received exclusively from the the mother, and the mother is different than the clone's donor DNA mother. 2) Epigenetics, which concerns the regulatory factors that influence which genes are expressed, in what amounts, for how long, etc. Thus, clones are less similar than, for instance, human identical twins.

 

[slicedtoad]

Too bad this is on the fourth page, but here is the worst hacking seen ever
Double Hacking (two people on the same keyboard): http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=39CRw7zH_2A

 

[dalmvern]

[citation][nom]Pailin[/nom]sound in space from explosions...the shockwave (all that particulate matter accelerated from the explosion with no air resistance) from something as big as a DeathStar hitting your fleeing shit Would make a Lot of noisemust be a scary noise :sfrom any moderate sized explosion in space some of the matter shot outwards would probably hit your ship = noiseTie fighters screaming.... how are they making those tight turns in space without jets shooting out all over the place.... maybe some kinda gravity drive pulling on all nearby objects in space to help the craft manouver -- so some kinda freaky noise of this new drive...??maybe they doen't have to make that noise but the Empire tweaked the drives to strike fear into their enemies - kinda like the Nazi's Stuka Dive Bombers scream to heighten the fear of their victims[/citation]

I dont think you understand the point Kate is making...this is actually one of the ones I completely agree with her on.

Noise does no travel through a vacuum. It does not matter what kind of propulsion drives a Tie fighter may have, the pilot might hear the sound, but anyone not in that ship will not hear anything because the sound waves have no way to propagate through a vacuum. You are correct in your statement that an explosion in space will propel the surrounding matter outwards, possibly showering the vessel you are on with debris, and yes you would hear the pinging of this debris off of the ship, but in no way would you hear an explosion. Also, the "shockwave" that would hit you, cannot be created either because a shockwave, similar to a sound wave, is a type of propagating disturbance in a fluid, gas, or plasma medium. Again, not possible in a vacuum.

 

[dalmvern]

[citation][nom]DSpider[/nom]I hate to quote myself but I seriously would like an answer.There can't be an open flame without oxygen, right? You can't light something on fire in the absence of oxygen, so sparks in space make absolutely no "fracking" sense. For instance in Battlestar Galactica when the raptor ships were forced to land, they would light up like the 4th of July across something like half of the landing strip. I was like wut.[/citation]

You are right, the only way that a ship would be "burning" is if it were venting off oxygen at that point. Then it would be plausible for a flame to be sustained by the vented oxygen, but the fire would likely burn itself out very quickly.

 

[tului]

The Jurassic Park scene is somewhat believable given the "hacker" nature of the guy who put it together. I could see someone like him making that "Uh uh uh, you didn't say the magic word" animation back in those days.

 

[tului]

One funny thing about the two Jurassic Park nods, in a separate thing it's mentioned that fonts are made huge. I love how in number 16 it's got /usr in giant letters on the screen.

 

[duxducis]

I got one you should post ,
The power cable on monitors in movies are always missing
So actors look at blank screens (or big picture attached, most likely big green picture, or just few green x's) I believe they do all what you see on monitors done post process.

Found that funny to look at lol

 

[jawshoeaw]

why couldn't a force field be "modulated" to block certain frequencies, polarities, etc. of light?

 

[jawshoeaw]

shockwaves do exist in space because first of all, space is not a pure vacuum, and second of all, given a massive enough object (star for example), enough matter is liberated in the explosion that shockwaves can and do propagate through the matter. This doesn't mean you'd hear anything of course, but you might see something.

Also, many things burn without an oxygen atmosphere, so long as oxygen or similar is liberated in the immediate vicinity. Things that are hot enough will spark, since sparking is not necessarily a combustion reaction. In fact, sparks are usually just small bits of matter that got hot enough to give off visible light.

 

[jawshoeaw]

[citation][nom]Anonymous[/nom]Actually, there is some truth to the idea that clones may degrade faster due to problem in the cloning process. Dolly the sheep, for instance, suffered from several disorders in later life that were not due to her genetic code. Other (though not all) clones have suffered similar fates. Yes, clones are genetic twins, but at least two things keep them from being exactly the same. 1) Not all of your DNA is contained within your chromosomes. Mitochondrial DNA is received exclusively from the the mother, and the mother is different than the clone's donor DNA mother. 2) Epigenetics, which concerns the regulatory factors that influence which genes are expressed, in what amounts, for how long, etc. Thus, clones are less similar than, for instance, human identical twins.[/citation]


OK, seriously people, bullets do not impart significant momentum to the body that is struck. The reason comes from a simple fact in physics: momentum is conserved but kinetic energy is not. It doesn't matter how fast a bullet is traveling, or that energy is proportional to square of velocity. Momentum carries no such v^2 and kinetic energy from bullets is almost entirely converted into heat and sound. Good scene in one of the band of brothers movies where a guy is heat by a sniper bullet and just crumples.

The ONLY way a "bullet" would knock you back would be if the bullet was both a: a significant proportion of your weight (it would have to be like over a pound!) and b: completely stopped by your body so that all the momentum was transferred to your body. You can see the problem here - if the bullet is light, it must necessarily be traveling much faster to create enough momentum to knock you over - but such a fast moving object would just pass right through you (leaving a nice hole). No amount of tumbling and expanding, hollow point, etc. will stop a bullet completely. And if the bullet is heavy, then how do you shoot it? From a tank? But you'd have to shoot it at such a low velocity that it would be more liking lobbing than shooting.

I'll pick an extreme example , a .50 cal anti aircraft machine gun bullet: 45 gram projectile moving at 1000 m/s . You weigh 220lbs with your gear (100 Kilos) and get hit with this beast wearing magic body armor. So you and the bullet together will have a new mass of 100.045 kilos and a velocity of (.045100.045) times 1000 m/s = about 1 mph. Now that would be a kick in the pants. You would stumble back at one mph if and only if the bullet was completely stopped by your armor and nothing bounced or ricochet off.

 

[Guest]

While the "I know this"-line the girl in Jurassic Park uses is kinda stupid, the software she uses to browse through the files of the security actually exists and wasn't a mock-up made for the movie:
It's an experimental 3D file manager called "fsn" and was developed by SGI.

 

[Guest]

Flawed science is by far the least of ST Nemesis' crimes.