The John-Carter Assignment
I know this is old news, but I just suffered through all 2+ hours of John Carter last night. As the requisite nerd in the party (I’m a level 40 dungeon impressario, actually) I felt compelled to respect Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars by watching the entire film, which represents a warning to all story tellers (teachers) who try to tell too much with too little time; imagine if New Line Cinema hadn’t picked up the Lord of the Rings, and it would have remained merely one or two films.
Yikes:
So, we didn’t have the budget for Beorn…
This nerdgasm intersects heavily with a conversation I had with a visiting teacher last week. Will Dible teaches high school in rural-er Iowa than even I do, and his school gave him a free elective to create last semester, so he created “The Nature and Meaning of Science.”
Badass, right?
Here’s an assignment I’m absolutely going to steal from him:
Choose a work of science fiction and take it in. Watch/read it again and note the times or page numbers of each hard science reference. Then make a validity argument for or against the implementation of that science content. Feel free to make a youtube voice over, paper, slide show, however best your work can be elucidated.
John Carter centers around a guy who gets transported to Mars, and then has seemingly super-martian strength because of the low gravity of the planet. I’m not sure how this film slipped by the online physics community, but it is literally a physics laugh riot and Newtonian playground.
Carter can jump super high and throw things super far. How have we not analyzed this? Especially when it begs for some basic astronomy and gravity lessons. I’m going to use this film in class next year, but I think it would also make a fantastic work for students to analyze for physics-validity.
I may even use this assignment as my final. Then students would be forced to look for examples (or anti-examples) of each standard.
Here’s the start to a list of works that students might choose, add more in the comments please!
- John Carter (Film)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (film or book)
- Any super hero movie (Iron Man is especially good, because he has no powers)
- Flatland (Abbott Abbott)
- Ringworld (warning: awkward parts)
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- Ender’s Game
- Star Wars (IV-VI)
- Star Trek (any movie or a few episodes, perhaps across series?)
- Inception (2010)
- Battlestar Galactica (Vipers!)
- Babylon 5 (Also interesting vehicle mechanics)
- Pixar’s UP (So many force diagrams on the house, so many.)
- Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke)
- Wall-E
- NPR’s Top 100
Rotate-y PVC Ramp-y Ball-y Game-y Thing-y Steamusoidal
It’s on BBC America, 8/4 9:00PM
Doctor Who has always been a fav. On Sat.8/4 there is a special “The Science of Doctor Who” it looks very interesting.
Any of the matrix movies as well but given they live inside a computer program maybe that means none of the rules apply anyway.
I would add a movie Gattaca…Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman I think…humans are all born by design for specific roles in life, DNA is used to test people for what jobs they can/should perform…’natural’ humans are considered lower class since they have weaknesses the designed humans do not. Would love the DNA conversation about that!
Check your local high school library for The physics of Star Trek Lawrence M. Krauss ; with a foreword by Stephen Hawking. We’ve got it.
Thanks, Kathy! I really want to do a better job of utilizing the MC this year. I’ve been such a cotten-headed ninnymuggins about time, that I forget to use the resources I’ve got right in my backyard.
That is an awesome project! One book to add to your list (prompted by the Flatland inclusion): The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World (Dewdney). Dewdney took a look at the flatland universe, and started analyzing the physics, chemistry, biology, and even geology of a 2-dimensional planet. Martin Gardner did a nice write up on some of the theories; The Planiverse presents his findings through a fictional account of a computer game (simulating a 2d world) that seems to get a life of its own.
Love the timing on this, Shawn. I watched John Carter just last night; I have to admit (blush) to liking it. Your points, though, are well taken, and I like the project idea. Of course, as an ELA teacher, I’d throw in willing suspension of disbelief — especially with the bad physics stuff, which made the story and bouncing Carter more fun.