Sorta-OT: Movies and Electronic Design

The legs & cleavage don't bother you?

Your electronics have all been demiliterized. There have been cases where military srplus electronics hit the market without removing the self destruct charges.

Parallel development taken to the extreme. After all, their 'Lost Colony' was supposed to be on Earth. :)

Joerg makes his own resistors out of black powder, though.

That would be me. In about 1960, I brought home from J.J. Glass Electronics in Smog Angeles a pile of BC-645(?) IFF transponders one of which still had the destruct charges installed. My parents called the police, which arrived with the bomb squad. They fired it off inside a big trailer. Lots of smoke, but no bang.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

One early example I recall was a real [0] Dr. Who episode where some device was screwing up and the solution was to "reverse the polarity of the neutron flow". I didn't notice it in context but it was pointed out to me later.

For an extensive compendium of examples, go to TV Tropes. Some good technology-related tropes on that site include...

CAUTION: TV Tropes can be a huge (if entertaining) time sink.

Matt Roberds

[0] In a real Dr. Who episode, if one of the actors leans on the wall, the wall moves.

This was standing around the TV section of Costco, which would hardly qualify as an entertainment facility. The people I was with were genuinely interested in my physics lessons (probably because they could later irritate their friends in the same manner). I would not do that in a theater or even at home.

Incidentally, the mob from NPS were on a class assignment where the students were required to watch the movie and identify the errors. Everyone (except me) was marking time taking notes.

The last movie I saw in a theater was the original Star Wars movie. Well, I've attended a few kids parties at theaters, but that was anything but entertaining (i.e. herding cats and kids).

One gets a different picture of the value of entertainment when school kids base their understanding of physics and electronics on the movies. The best thing that's happend is Mythbusters, which is physics disguised as entertainment. While I would not expect to learn much from the Mythbusters shows, it does provide a good basis for kids to suspect that the physics they see in the movies is not exactly real.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Some were thermite, and big enough to turn the equimpent into a puddle of molten metal. I think they were the ones left on some surplused Norden Bombsites.

Spaceships attacked. All the control panels shoot out sparks but still work a few minutes later. The good guys never lose pressurization, never lose gravity. The sparks are always white, same sparks that lead bullets make whenever they hit anything.

LIFE SUPPORT WILL FAIL IN 43.8 SECONDS.

Almost anything having to do with computers is bogus. The good guys can always figure out passwords, in a few seconds if their lives depend on it.

I was watching an absurd Die Hard movie (hey, I was stuck at home) and the villians downloaded all the financial data from the whole world onto their hard drive, in a few minutes. Then they apparently could have erased that drive, and destroyed civilization.

And why do our heroes fall huge distances, land horizontally on hard stuff, groan, and get back into action?

Why do people have fist fights, gunshots, other injuries, and look fine 5 minutes later?

Why do super high-tech laser energy weapons almost always miss? Can't they add target seekers or something, in the year 2500?

Explosions and gunshots always hurl people into the air.

All explosive devices have digital countdown timers. All delayed-action devices are always precise to the second.

Our detectives always jump into a car and race to confront the bad guys alone. A real detective would send in a hundred cops and a dozen helicopters and some medics.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com 

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom laser drivers and controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro   acquisition and simulation

The last I saw was 'Chicken Run' Its website had a free calculator you could download, but the website is gone. :)

I saw a kid fall out of a hayloft, and land on his back on the studded steel rear wheel of a combine. it was over 30 feet, but he jumped up and ytelled, DOn't tell my dad, he'll kill me. THen he went back to work hauling bales up into the loft.

Come on! Hollywood used up all their analog tricks on Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers & Captain Video.

They use old Tek round-CRT scopes!

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com 

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom laser drivers and controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro   acquisition and simulation

And they usually have audio.

Because they are big & cheap, or even free,

G.I. Joe, when the blown ice field sinks in the water.

Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Designs

In the 1975 fire at the Browns ferry nuclear power plant, they lost control cabling to the control rod drives. The reactor ran at 100% power, with only thermal self-stabilization keeping it in control, for about 8 hours. The operators pulled 12 V batteries out of the control room emergency lighting units and stuck wires into the light bulb sockets of the annunciator panel to command the control rod valves to put the rods in. First, they had to get 480 v power to the pumps rigged by stringing festoons of cables across the floor of the aux. building. By the time they were able to do this, the reactor vessel pressure was so high they had to use the emergency core coolant system pumps, those were the only ones that could match the reactor pressure.

Jon

They could use Analog Vectorscopes these days. I see the half wide Tekronix for $20 plus shipping on Ebay.

The 1730 is abundant right now.

HAve you ever seen 'Plan 9 from outer space'? How about 'Mission Stardust' based on the first Perry Rhodan novels? 'Space, 1999' where the piles of atomic waste go critical and turn the Earth's moon into a FTL transport?

Or Scotty's (Start Trek) "zero to the hundredth power". It severely grated on me the first time. I mean. come on!