Bad Movie Physics

As TIMES ONLINE reports this morning, the popular horror movie image of ghastly death due to sucking quicksand is just another movie myth.

This discovery is based on the work of four scientists (A. Khaldoun, E. Eiser, G. H. Wegdam and D. Bonn) publishing an article in today's issue of Nature titled "Rheology: Liquefaction of Quicksand under Stress." As it happens, "A person trapped in salt-lake quicksand is not in any danger of being sucked under completely." Instead, one would sink about half-way and stop; the graver danger is if the tide sweeps in on a stuck person and causes drowning.

But that's only half of it: Neither can you pull a stuck person out of quicksand without ripping them asunder. The force to remove one foot from the sand, says the TIMES ONLINE, "would require as much force as it takes to lift a family car, and the body would give way before the sand relinquished its grip."

Sadly, many of nHumanities' favorite movies have made use of horrific quicksand death, such as The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), Lawrence of Arabia, Flash Gordon, King Solomon's Mines, and The Jungle Book.

More bad film physics . . .

Broken windows: hero jumps through window, not a scratch. In reality jumping through plate glass would slice off body parts.

Flashing bullets: sparks as bullets ricochet off walls, doors etc. Bullets are made of copper-clad lead or lead alloys which do not produce sparks in this way.

Bangs in space: sound is carried by a wave that needs matter to propagate. Outer space is, in essence, a vacuum in which no one can hear you scream.