ISMP In the Classroom?

Physics Classes: The web site was originally created to help high school students think physics and have a lot of fun in the process. The book adds new content to the classroom in ways only a book can accomplish. While it's written for a wide audience, it includes example calculations designed to increase understanding.

Film Classes:  Knowing when and when not to alter a movie's physics is as important to creating the illusion of reality as acting, costumes, and sets. The ISMP book brings a new point of view to the study of film making.

Consider buying a classroom set.

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics (ISMP)

First the Web Site, Now the Book

Many ISMP favorites with lots of new analysis and content including:

  • Hollywood Robots: Are they really the all powerful, multi-purpose, super smart devices that can run for decades without so much as an oil change?
  • ISMP in the movie JFK: From the standpoint of physics, could Oswald have done it?
  • Pearl Harbor's real physics: How did an understanding of physics shape the Japanese attack? Why was it so hard to shoot down a Japanese bomber? Would the bomb that sank the USS Arizona have been released directly above it?
  • The force field used in WWII for protecting ships from air attack: What was it and what were its limitations?
  • Star Wars vs Star Trek: Which has the most ISMP?
  • The 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics: The worst ISMP mistakes
  • Movie momentum: The attractive force of glass, rail gun recoil, and the cosmic Toyota
  • Real vs. movie disasters : Which is worse tsunamis or tornados?
  • Space battles: Which tactics might actually work and which would be suicidal?
  • Firearm physics: They're not the all-powerful problem solvers with endless ammunition as often depicted in movies. The book includes discussions of shooting from the hip, sniper rifles, sideways handgun grip, etc.
  • Artificial gravity: Good, bad, and downright ugly depictions of it in space movies
  • Real gravity: How it affects orbits and vertical takeoffs from asteroids with no gravity. What it's like inside a planet?
  • Jumps and leaps: Could the terrorist have survived the jump in True Lies? Why scaling a critter up can't make it jump higher or further.
  • The dos and don'ts of movie physics: When moviemakers should and shouldn't alter physics.
  • The physics of escape: Is it possible to outrun an explosion? Can a person escape a fire ball by jumping in a lake?
  • The physics of falling: Everything from falling humans to falling bullets.

Written in the the irreverent and humorous ISMP tradition with all kinds of content for anyone who wants to learn something about how the universe works. Ideal for discriminating movie goers, film students, aspiring science fiction writers, physics students, teachers, and anyone who wants to understand physics and just plain have fun.

About the author: Tom Rogers has taught AP Physics since 1993. He currently teaches in the International Baccalaureate magnet program for gifted and talented students at Southside High School in Greenville SC. He began using movie physics in 1996 as a way to get his students thinking about physics outside of his classroom. In 1997 he set up the Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics which has gone on to become the internet's premier movie physics site and has grown to about 1,000,000 visits a year.

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics  by Tom Rogers

Best Price $8.92  or Buy New $10.17

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