Structural Engineer On the Fallacies of Movie Bridge Destruction (hackaday.com) 211
szczys writes: Suspension bridges like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge are favorite victims for movie makers but are almost always shown to perform in violation of the laws of physics. Structural Engineer Alex Weinberg couldn't stay silent any longer. He covers how bridge collapses in several major films should have looked. The biggest offender? Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises.
Parade of the Pedants! (Score:4, Insightful)
Next they will be telling us that X-Wing fights can't really bank in space and don't make that "rrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaararrarrr" noise.
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Next they will be telling us that X-Wing fights can't really bank in space and don't make that "rrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaararrarrr" noise.
There's no reason why an X-Wing can't bank in space, it just needs to use attitude control rockets and it can bank in any direction it wants to. Since X-Wings can fly in the atmosphere (where banking would be useful), maybe the R2 units automatically bank the fighter in the vacuum of space to give the pilots a more consistent feeling.
There are a number of explanations for the sound that you hear when a fighter flies near the camera in the documentaries you're watching. It could be that the fighters are mic'
Re:Parade of the Pedants! (Score:5, Interesting)
ere are a number of explanations for the sound that you hear when a fighter flies near the camera in the documentaries you're watching
The explanation in Babylon 5 was that the fighters are actually making noises in the cockpit when other fighters fly nearby, as an audible cue to the pilot about where in the sphere to look for that other fighter. Real world fighters use all sorts of audible cues, so that the pilot can keep his eyes on the target.
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So did Babylon 5 have sound during in-cockpit scenes and silence (or background music, but nothing else) during exterior scenes? (One of these days I need to get around to watching Babylon 5...)
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The banking would also provide consistent acceleration on maneuvers, as if you bank when turning, you are pushed down in your seat, if you just turn you are thrown sideways into the cockpit side panel. The banking would allow turning maneuvers to act like gravity at times and would make it easier for the pilot to deal with.
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Does it feel good to scratch that OCD and NPD itch?
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Fiction is about suspending disbelief, and the presenter should help you do that. Show something that's physically absurd and the bubble bursts. Even in fantasy, you shouldn't expect the audience to accept unreality that the premise doesn't need.
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Show something that's physically absurd and the bubble bursts. Even in fantasy, you shouldn't expect the audience to accept unreality that the premise doesn't need.
I would say that this is true in sci-fi, but anything goes in fantasy :-)
Re:Parade of the Pedants! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not true. Most fantasy stories come with rules, unspoken or otherwise. Batman is the good guy. Bilbo can't do magic. Harry Potter needs a wand to cast spells. Glorfindel does not use a rocket launcher.
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Actually, Harry Potter only sometimes needs a wand to cast spells. http://harrypotter.wikia.com/w... [wikia.com]
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I like to think of the wands as a bit like a resonant megaphone. The magic comes from the wizard, and the wands just amplify and focus what comes out.
Swish and flick the wrong way and you screw up the frequency with a magical Doppler effect.
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So we're making more rules here. That's the point I was making. Fantasy is not a system where anything goes, because there are rules being applied all the time.
It's an annoying fight in the online game I play, Lord of the Rings Online, where some new player wishes for something ridiculous to happen ("the other game I played had floating castles!l") and then they defend it by saying "but it's just a fantasy, so anything can happen").
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Exactly. Number 1 rule for any science fiction or fantasy story: Stick to the rules for your universe. Anyone can accept that magic works a certain way, what they can't accept is when your characters or your story forgets to behave within your rules.
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fire is still hot in fantasy. make a fireball, and you're not going to freeze your target... unless it's a blue flame, then anything goes really. your central conceit may be that thermodynamics doesn't apply, and a blue fireball is a cold flame... because magic.
but that's part of the fantasy, and gots to be explicit in a way. if it's a standard orange flame, it's hot hot hot. in keeping with any color flame in our world.
Re:Parade of the Pedants! (Score:4, Funny)
Fiction is about suspending disbelief, ...
Or, in this case, "suspensioning" disbelief.
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die in a fire.
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Because the flaws are so egregious that they've gone beyond merely funny and into face palming territory. Just because it's a movie doesn't mean you can just be stupid about it. Now if the entire premise is bizarre and the world setting is alien, then maybe stretching things is ok (otherwise Anime would fall on its face). But if the entire premise is that the world is just like our own except for a few military combat situations, then having a bridge floating in mid air is just plain dumb.
Believe me, eve
Re:Parade of the Pedants! (Score:4, Informative)
well.. in case of star trek and star wars.. there was explanations before for why tie fighters did not fight in atmosphere(they would break up) and why xwings had closing wings(closing or opening them while in space serves little purpose). also once upon a time star trek writers bothered to come up with plot lines where they didn't place the huge saucer space ship in atmosphere/gravity as well.
then came this one director who apparently was too stupid to understand backstories OR physics, so he made movies of both which seem just silly poorly informed fan flics. never mind the space phone.
the point is, that such things can destroy a plot. if there is a teleporter and flying to klingon home planet takes 1 hour and there is a space phone that can operate anywhere then everything else done in the movie is totally pointless.
with the batman, it doesn't really affect the plot how it looks when the bridge breaks - what matters for the plot is just that the bridge breaks. there's big plot holes around that sure about human behavior but that is hardly the point.
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also once upon a time star trek writers bothered to come up with plot lines where they didn't place the huge saucer space ship in atmosphere/gravity as well.
Are you speaking of this scene?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I thought it was pretty believable, the way the saucer section kind of flies down. Now, Into Darkness was entirely unbelievable, a ship in orbit doesn't just fall straight down when power is removed...
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He's beyond your ken in networking and in programming, clearly. He's done things you never will and did them when he was younger than yourself by far.
So you worked with these things before they were invented?
I was 5 years old when programming on a Commodore, you did it younger?
I was in middle school when I was administering the family computer, you did it younger?
I was in high school when I was working on networking, you did it younger?
Funny how you claim to not be APK, but you know exactly how old he was when he started on these things. Funny how these things weren't even invented when you were the same age as I was when I started.
Everything else in yo
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That wasn't the claim made. The claim made was that you were coding at a younger age. Were you younger than 5 when you started coding?
Somehow I doubt it, as you quote 1981, which would put it a mere 4 years before me.
Here is the claim in case you have problems with your page up key:
He's done things you never will and did them when he was younger than yourself by far.
You were obviously not younger than I, as if you are in your 50s now, you started in your teens or early 20s.
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Yes, I validly refuted every one of your points. That is why you feel the need to post them over and over again in order to bury the responses. You can always link to a place you posted it where I didn't respond, because you posted the same damn thing thirty times. Perhaps if you would have a civil discussion, you could save yourself a bunch of time shitposting.
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DNS: You have stated that you use a DNS. But that hosts files are so much better because they use less resources. If you are already using those resources by running a DNS server, why not just put the entries there? You have repeatedly stated this, and the lack of logic in the statement is part of the AD DNS comment. The other part was that you told me that you believe distributing hosts files through group policy is better than loading them in DNS because DNS uses more resources. Following that logica
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Privilege escalation: This comes down to a combination of our software being marked as malware, and your refusal to submit to a security evaluation/source code review of your software. Your software could frankly be doing anything, and since there are so many ways to get around program tracing, there is no way to trust what your software is doing. The risks of man in the middle attacks utilizing entries buried inside the hosts files or incorrectly updated from your upstream providers, to malware loading a
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Mr. Steven Burn of Malwarebytes' hpHosts has REVIEWED MY CODE & HAS A COPY (he wouldn't host it otherwise)!
http://forum.hosts-file.net/vi... [hosts-file.net]
I see nothing to indicate that he has done any code review, he even says that Malware Bytes has no affiliation with your software, and he is hosting it himself. Why would I believe the rest of your claim when there is no evidence for it?
As I said in my post, you can't claim that your software is safe just because you say it is. Point to somewhere with Steve Burn of Malwarebytes saying he has done a code review of your software.
Suspend your disbelief (Score:2, Insightful)
Pretty much everything in every movie is not realistic. Why should blowing up bridges be any different.
Go see movie. Suspend your disbelief. Enjoy it. Go home. Get on with the rest of your life instead of sitting around with nerds over analyzing everything.
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You don't get it... he wants to be hired by Chris Nolan to produce more realistic bridge explosions. Movies have become more realistic over the years. Why not consult engineers for these destruction scenes?
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Oh, and I forgot to comment on the fact that I absolutely do not believe you that movies have become more realistic over the years. At all. Because they haven't.
Don't you miss the car going off a cliff and always bursting into flames? A staple of 70's movies and TV.
I remember for a while, the Simpson's would spoof that - the best one was when a baby carriage rolled down some steps, fell over, and blew up.
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Did you miss the attempt at realism of
The Martian
Interstellar
Gravity
?
They may not be perfect, but at least Hollywood is trying to get it right.
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That is pretty much what I said. Gravity tried to get it right, but they had her doing some crazy orbit changes that just wouldn't happen. There are some things you just can't get completely right and have a story.
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You probably didn't go see that last Godzilla movie then. What a pile of crap.
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Anne McCaffrey made a whole book series that had believable gigantic lizards. They even flew and breathed fire.
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Anne McCaffrey made a whole book series that had believable gigantic lizards. They even flew and breathed fire.
Well, to be fair, they only breathed fire when fed special rocks. And you left out the part about how they could [redacted to avoid spoilers], both forwards and backwards.
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Making that pile of crap "realistic" wouldn't have helped. But really, how realistic can you make a movie about a gigantic lizard?
Realistic isn't even the point of the Godzilla movies. They are camp they are more comedy than scifi.
Godzilla should never be other than a guy in a rubber suit.
It's funny, one of my son's vivid memories is sitting with me watching Son of Godzilla, perhaps the funniest one of all. Gojira as a doting dad - doesn't get much better than that.
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You make it realistic by having it fit into the world and act consistently. Of course S.H.I.E.L.D. has a helicarrier and the Avengers have assorted superpowers. That's how that particular world works. However, the helicarrier can be crashed by sufficient rotor destruction, and Captain America is never going to fly without assistance. The Millennium Falcon can do that jump into hyperspace, but it takes time, and can't be done if the component that makes it possible is sabotaged.
If the world starts wor
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> Umm, what HASN'T Neil DeGrasse Tyson whinged about?
systemd ?
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Fuck your nerd-hate. You don't belong on Slashdot.
Also: Don't tell me what to do. You want to enjoy crap: fine. I don't have to.
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No sane man derides the ones he pities.
Don't run from the truth. It is weak.
Well written and funny article (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well written and funny article (Score:5, Informative)
You should have read further and into the comments as well. Catenary is indeed not a parabola, but the suspension cables are. The cables are not free-hanging, they carry a considerable mass, which makes them parabola-shaped. As soon as the bridge fails, the cables turn into catenary shape, which makes his usage of the words accurate.
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How does it feel to be that guy?
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I stopped reading when he described a catenary as a parabola
Why is that? Did the line drop?
The cable would be a catenary only if there were no load on it other than its self weight, which is uniform along the cable - which is not horizontal except right at the centre. However, when supporting a road deck, the deck imposes a weight load that is uniform along the horizontal length, not uniform along the length of the cable. The road deck weight is far greater than the cable self-weight, so it is (more or less) a parabola.
That is to the first order anyway.
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But, what he describes is quite different than a suspension bridge. The bridge deck (the equivalent of which is missing in his analogy) will take some compressive force and has some stiffness. If sufficiently
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A real world suspension bridge design would most certainly not be strong enough, but his analogy is flawed.
First, any analogy is flawed if you look into it deep enough. That's why they're analogies.
Then, you mention something that would make it 'flawed', but that no real world bridge would be strong enough, so they'd still fail, making the clothesline analogy 'good enough', at least in my opinion, because the net effect would be the same(bridge/clothes fall down).
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It appears to be a double decker bridge like the George Washington bridge (end of the Jersey Turnpike into NY). I doubt that the box truss is there for structural support, but to support the upper roadway.
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It isn't, otherwise the remainder of the bridge would not be necessary.
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Of course the thing is going to fall down when the majority of the structure no longer works. What's going to hold it up? That thing that is not there any more. The majority of the structure is a little bit different to a single rivet.
How about we discuss reality instead of having a stupid fucking debate where one person decides they need to argue on the side of fantasy and has no scruples about how they so it.
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You don't know what "majority" means, do you?
Everything apart from the deck in this case.
Why are you bothering to pick a fight while unarmed?
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Re:Well written and funny article (Score:5, Funny)
I stopped reading when he described a catenary as a parabola
Yeah, what a dumbass.
Everyone knows a catenary is a little yellow bird.
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Everyone knows a catenary is a little yellow bird.
Only after it's been eaten by your household pet.
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A cable hanging freely from two fixed points will form a catenary –like the wires between telephone poles.
This is not the case with a suspension bridge, where additional, vertical cables are strung every 20 or 40 meters, in order to support the road deck. The resultant shape is not a catenary. Probably closer to a parabola, as the cable is supporting not only its own weight along its length, but also the decking in periodic increments.
Each suspension bridge differs slightly, depending upon the wei
Crikey. When I used the phrase "passionate.... (Score:2)
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You should have continued reading, because the author used parabola correctly.
A hanging cable of constant weight by itself would assume the shape of a catenary, but a suspension bridge is not just a hanging cable. The main suspension cable of a suspension bridge is also holding the (much greater) weight of the actual bridge trough a set of cables, so it assumes the shape of a parabola.
http://whistleralley.com/hangi... [whistleralley.com]
Subject Matter Experts Vs. Movies (Score:2)
Can physics professors enjoy Road Runner cartoons, or do the blatant violations of physics drive them nuts?
I know one who attempted to codify the cartoons rules, such as "a being doesn't actually fall until they realize they are (inadvertently) suspended in the air." She said, "If you are going to make a fake world, at least be consistent in it."
Maybe one expects cartoons to be goofy, whereas action and drama movies attempt to look real, and that's what sets subject experts off.
I know some real crime analy
The Cartoon Laws Of Physics (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~ka... [toronto.edu]
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Don't forget computers like hacking!
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My wife, while in grad school for her History PhD, once went to see A Knight's Tale with a bunch of Medievalists. It did not go well.
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James Bond physics (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh. My brother and I grew up watching James Bond movies. And obviously, these movies are entertainment and fantasy, not documentary and physics lectures. We all knew that. We all accepted that. But one day my bother went to see a James Bond movie, and he came home positively spitting nails.
It was the the movie where there is a chase scene on skis, so Bond skis down a mountain, and the bottom of the mountain delivers him to the roof of a chalet, and he skis down the roof, and off the edge, and lands on a picnic table, and skis across the table and then keeps on going. And when I say "picnic table", I don't mean a deserted, snow-covered table. The table was laid with a table-cloth and a picnic and people sitting all around. (I don't recall if Bond came off of it with a dinner roll stuffed in his mouth, like a Loony-Toons character).
Anyway. The problem was that my bother skied. And he knew, from painful, first-hand experience, that if you are skiing down a mountain, and you hit just the tiniest bare spot--just the tiniest patch of dirt or rock--it feels like your ski has been grabbed by a bear trap, and you're lucky if you don't tumble right there. Skiing across a picnic table isn't a skill, or a stunt--it's just flat impossible.
Bond movies are unrealistic, yes, but this one was unrealistic in a way that he couldn't accept. And it killed the movie for him.
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The problem was that my bother skied. And he knew, from painful, first-hand experience, that if you are skiing down a mountain, and you hit just the tiniest bare spot--just the tiniest patch of dirt or rock--it feels like your ski has been grabbed by a bear trap..
Bullshit. Youtube ski stunts, and you'll see all sorts of tricks on all sorts of surfaces other than snow...
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And you found that out right after saying, "Hey y'all, watch this." Amiright?
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Yes a change of snow conditions, hitting a bare patch etc. does feel like your ski has been grabbed by a bear trap. However if you do fall over that is because your position on the skies, was bad in the first place and you where too slow to correct it.
Here is a YouTube video on how to box slide which is probably the closest freestyle trick to the James Bond ski over a table stunt you are referring too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The stunt in James Bond is perfectly possible for a good freestyle skier,
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On top of that, it was a polished wooden table, no tablecloth. It likely would have been pretty slippery from the water/snow the ski brought with it. But the deck railing snapping like that with the bikes hitting them, that is utterly unbelievable. :)
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The article is referring to CGI bridge failures. If they built a scale model and wrecked it the behaviour could well match reality - even though in reality Godzilla just isn't going to walk through the Golden Gate.
This is why films which still use physical stunts are inherently superior to those that rely on CGI. The Blues Brothers wouldn't be a classic if they hadn't set a world record.
OMG Pacific Rim (Score:5, Informative)
- Oil tanker swung like a baseball bat (it would buckle and snap in half just lifting it by one end).
- Helicopters carrying gigantic armored robots (a C-5 Galaxy can carry a single M1A2 Abrams tank).
- EMP-type event not affecting one robot because it's nuclear powered.
- Nuclear reactor causing a nuclear explosion (they can't do that, their fuel isn't even the right type to attain uncontrolled criticality).
- Giant monsters with exoskeletons (they would collapse under own weight). I let this one pass because of the Godzilla tradition, including the streets and buildings.
Yep, Pacific Rim was bad physics (Score:5, Informative)
I'm with you on all of those.
For those that might be wondering about the oil tanker(and such). Consider how strong, proportionally, insects are compared to humans. This scaling continues. It's relatively easy to make a toy helicopter that can fall from several times it's height, ram it's blades into objects, and such and still come out without damage. A helicopter big enough for people? No way.
Things like oil tankers are carefully balanced and strong where they need to be strong for their designed purpose. A tanker is designed to carry it's weight while supported on all sides by water.
It's also why Superman's hands should tear through vehicles like paper instead of lifting them, much of the time. You don't jack up so much as 1/4 of a car without using specific points that are capable of holding the structure.
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Indeed. When I read something like "if an ant was as big as a dog it could lift a bus" it makes me spit blood.
No it couldn't. If its legs didn't collapse under its own weight it would suffocate.
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If you're talking about a movie about an alien from a faraway world that blew up, who looks just like a human male and is romantically interested in human females, and has all sorts of weird abilities when the star he's near is yellow instead of red, the only way to accept it is in its own world. In that world, Superman can indeed carry an ocean liner around on one hand, and buildings can indeed fall like dominoes.
You could just as well complain about Lord of the Rings for having elves, orcs, trolls, an
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It was only one example, sheesh...
The point is that, much like the uncanny valley, it's often the little things that break our suspension of disbelief, not the big things. We can take superman just fine, but we go 'wait a moment!' when he picks up a car by the bumper.
Elves, orcs, trolls, and such are easy to take - alternate evolution. *shrug*. Wizards operate by unknown/unknowable rules. So we accept that they can TK lift a car.
Superman, though, is presumably trying to do it by sheer physical force. W
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I may be coming from a different viewpoint. I read a lot of Superman comics as a child, and I assure you that, in the comics, Superman can hold up an ocean liner, pick up a sheet of ice by the edge, and catch someone in his (presumably unyielding) arms just before they're going to hit the concrete and they'll be fine. A Superman movie that tried to be realistic about this would jar me out of accepting what was going on.
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An excellent fan theory that covers all of Superman's abilities with a single physics-defying concept is that he can alter the kinetic energy of himself or anything that touches him, and can extend that effect around fairly solid objects.
It's still silly, but at least it's only *one* bit of silly to have to overlook.
Well, that and the yellow Sun thing, and how shards of his home planet seem to have inexplicably crossed the void at FTL speeds *and* magically found their way to Earth. And nobody ever mention
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There was a Russian fast breeder RTG thing that could have been like that if it was scaled up and a similar US design - but yes, unlikely to the point of near impossibility even then. See also exploding cars and a vast list of Hollywood getting silly for no good reason. Compare the scary scene but realistic scene of a drop of nitro going off with a bang and small dust cl
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- EMP-type event not affecting one robot because it's nuclear powered.
Actually, this wasn't the reason given in the film. It was even better. Gypsy Danger was ANALOG, not digital, so that's why it survived the blast.
I would love to see the schematics for that thing's control boards, since they apparently don't have a single microcontroller in there, no memory, nothing. For some reason they decided to build the entire robot with 1930's technology. Not to mention, how are they modulating the power to all the insane motors they must have all over the place? The world's largest p
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I guess the question is what was meant to be implied by "Analog" in the context of the movie (and the real answer is they just needed some technobabble to explain why one robot was EMP immune and another one wasn't).
The thyratons are interesting - how would they be used for analog control? It looks like enough current can be sourced, but they can't be operated in a linear region so you're talking about switching still, which smells digital to me.
And, I don't doubt that analog components could be up to certa
Perhaps ... (Score:4, Informative)
Always happy to share our vast quantity of experiences.
Japanese disaster movies (Score:4, Interesting)
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They are building a large apt building near Conshohocken. The thing must be 5 stories tall but the whole damned thing went up with wood framing (at least it looked like it from I-76). I'd imagine that there are quite a few buildings like that which would have model like collapses if subjected to typical movie building trauma.
Re:It's a catenary curve (Score:5, Informative)
However, in a suspension bridge with a suspended roadway, the chains or cables support the weight of the bridge, and so do not hang freely. In most cases the roadway is flat, so when the weight of the cable is negligible compared with the weight being supported, the force exerted is uniform with respect to horizontal distance, and the result is a parabola...
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From your own citation [wikipedia.org]:
However, in a suspension bridge with a suspended roadway, the chains or cables support the weight of the bridge, and so do not hang freely. In most cases the roadway is flat, so when the weight of the cable is negligible compared with the weight being supported, the force exerted is uniform with respect to horizontal distance, and the result is a parabola...
Correct. Ideally, it will be a parabola.
I could have saved some time by reading comments before my wordier posting, above...
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A cable hanging under its own weight forms a catenary [wikipedia.org], not a parabola. I presume that still applies when you hang a roadway from it.
It doesn't, since the roadway hangs from discrete points.