Question:
What are some scenes in the movie "Gravity" that portray Newton's 1st, 2nd or 3rd Law of Motion?
kat
2013-12-09 19:38:17 UTC
Besides the fire extinguisher scene portraying the 3rd law, are there any other scenes that portray any other law of motions by Newton? I'd ideally like a couple of examples for each law :) Also, are there any scenes that "violate" any of his laws of motion?

THANKS IN ADVANCE :)
Three answers:
Rokkerboyy
2013-12-13 08:48:08 UTC
1st Law (Inertia) ) It was hard to stop without using force such as grabbing on to the stations to stop or having to push your self around inside the stations. Also Bullock kept spinning after getting knocked off the shuttle until Clooney stopped her.

2nd Law (F=ma) ) Moving around in the station would require force to accelerate as well as rockets and the reaction control system (RCS) of Clooney's jetpack.

3rd (Reaction/reaction) ) Every time there was action like the fire, I reacted like "OH DAYUM." :P Nah, jk. the most visible example would have been the rockets burning fuel causing the jets exhaust to push them forward, the action of the expanded, heated gas caused thrust which is a force that is pushing out the heated gas, as well as pushing the rocket in the opposite direction. Same goes for the RCS on Clooney's pack only that gas might not have been heated. The fire extinguisher idea was genius and is a great example of this as well.



No scenes necessarily violated the laws of physics themselves from what I could tell, but some things were a bit unrealistic. The debris field would have been much smaller and such a chain reaction causing said field would have been fairly hard to accomplish. Also, an orbit that would reach the Hubble would not be anywhere near the ISS and Tiangong, an orbit reaching the ISS would not be anywhere near the Hubble and Tiangong and you get the idea. Also, its hard to imagine enough objects hitting the Tiangong to adjust its orbit to the point that it re-enters, especially considering all the object were hitting it from a direction that, if anything, would have pushed the Tiangong into a higher orbit. Also an orbit that passes relatively close to the locations that they reportedly saw would not correspond to any of the orbits they would have been in. Lastly, the little bubbles of fire were odd and unrealistic and the fire overall was far too large and flame-y for a space fire.
anonymous
2016-11-16 08:59:16 UTC
Laws Of Gravity Movie
CwCc
2013-12-09 19:49:58 UTC
As far as I could tell when I watched the movie, there wasn't anything blatantly wrong with the physics. The beginning part when Sandra Bullock gets knocked away and she's coasting away while spinning on her axis is a good demonstration of the first law. She continues drifting away and spinning because of her inertia, and the first law is a definition of inertia. George Clooney's thruster pack provided many very clean examples of the second law, especially when he was towing Sandra Bullock. The second law is the core of Newton's mechanics, though, and you can see it in any situation involving motion if you look hard enough.


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