Let's Get Physical!

A friend of mine recently sent me the URL for an interesting site: The Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics Page. These guys use basic high school physics to explain why, for instance, real cars almost never explode like Hollywood cars, or to calculate just how big a wheelbarrow full of ammo your typical action hero would actually need when he's out there mowing down everything in sight with his automatic weapon. They also have reviews of a number of movies, with specific attention paid to how reasonable or ridiculous the physics is (thus making it a rather nice companion page to Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Page, which does the same thing with particular reference to astronomy). It's so nice to know that I'm not the only one bothered by the impossible thermodynamics in The Matrix. Not to mention the "artificial gravity" seen in Armageddon, which had me quite literally howling with laughter for several minutes...

Elsewhere on the site is The Physics Savvy Quiz, designed to test your knowledge of basic physics. I scored 92.5%, which goes some way towards reassuring me that I haven't forgotten all my physics, although some of those questions did have me wracking my brains a bit. Oddly enough, I'd say the ones I got wrong were probably some of the simplest ones on the quiz, though exactly what that says about me, perhaps I'd rather not imagine.