The science of film
Teaching module for senior secondary school students 04 – 18 March 2025
Common conceptions about ‘invisible’ forces permeating the space around us are often wrong. Even in big Hollywood films, scenes are created that make little scientific sense.
The educational module proposes three sessions to learn how to verify, in everyday life, the validity of scientific theories such as general relativity and quantum mechanics, magnetism and motion, starting from the most striking errors in films: from Mission Impossible to Fast and Furious, from Indiana Jones to Breaking Bad, from Space Odyssey to Gravity.
In collaboration with Luca Perri
Electricity and Magnetism
- Tuesday 4 March 2025 at 10:00 - 12:00
Society's conceptions of the 'invisible' forces that permeate the space around us are often wrong. That is why we see scenes in Hollywood films that make very little scientific sense, but which we have no objection to. Electromagnetism is one of the areas that is most misunderstood in film-making. From Mission Impossible to Jurassic Park, we unearth the most ludicrous mistakes, trying to understand how film plots should be changed.
Forces and motion
- Tuesday 11 March 2025 at 10:00 - 12:00
We are always sure to understand what affects us very closely. An example? We all know how we move and how objects around us move. No? No. An example of this is the large number of errors, even very trivial ones, that fill the most famous of films and relate to the laws of motion and the forces that govern them. Indiana Jones, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Titanic and Armageddon are just a few examples of how great directors sometimes... don't know how to move.
General relativity and quantum mechanics
- Tuesday 18 March 2025 at 10:00 - 12:00
If the laws of physics that we experience in our daily lives are already misunderstood, imagine what might happen to the theories that often still represent the (ever-expanding) boundaries of our knowledge. Theories that we actually test every day without realising it, but which often seem so abstract as to be frightening: quantum mechanics and general relativity. From Interstellar to Tenet, from Star Wars to Back to the Future, we discover these theories through the (right and often wrong) scenes from cult films.
