Physics\' Big Break by Evan Campbell

This is funny.

Dear Mr. Campbell and Mr. Moskowec,

Very funny, very well made and fast paced. Some of the clips are from Tosh.0 (one of our guilty pleasures). In particular for the guy jumping onto the ice swimming pool is this in Russia? In addition to being very funny the physics of forces is clearly explained.

Good luck with the contest. Best,

Mike, Max, Dan, Simon, Doug

Evan and Chris,

Your video is well produced and contains a lot of interesting clips: it is certainly doing well with the FQXi community... congratulations! Everybody knows that physics hurts, and a lot of your clips prove it!

Having taught introductory physics for the past 25 years, I cannot help but offer some constructive criticism about the way you present the relationship between force, mass and acceleration. For instance, you say at the beginning of your video that to have a force, "you need an object with mass; add to that a form of acceleration, in this case gravity, and boom, you've got force; change the accelerant, the force changes; change the mass, the forces changes again." What you say is perfectly correct from a mathematical point of view: when you have a relationship between 3 variables, in this case F = ma, you can say that any variable depends on the other two. However, from a physical point of view, F = ma is usually understood by saying that the force is the cause, and the result is the acceleration: so it would be more accurate to say "to have an acceleration, you need a source of force; have this force act on a mass, and boom, you've got acceleration."

Later, when you say that to break something, "you want a force greater than the resistance of the thing you are trying to break", you are making a statement that seems to make perfect sense, but at the same time seems to contradict Newton's third law, that states that when an object A acts on an object B, object B exerts an opposite force of EQUAL STRENGTH on object A. When you dive and break the surface of the water, it is because the water is "soft" and you are unable to exert much force on it before it yields: so the water doesn't exert much force on you, and you keep going. When you bounce on a frozen pond, the surface is hard and can exert a large force, and it does: this force is strong enough to completely stop you and make you bounce!

Complicated and counter-intuitive? Sure! That's why physics class is so difficult for so many students...

Good luck in the contest!

Marc

Well done, a funny video! I will use this in my physics lessons for high school kids. It is exactly the kind of attention grabbing, witty, action packed type of video that students need to get them motivated and interested in physics.

Good stuff!

PS... Is Joe fisher real? he is everywhere.... He must be some kind of spoof comedy character.... anyone know?

hi even

i think everything too in the movies is pure physics,so i think your video makes it too into the movies and into describing events-physics.Fantanstic very well done,just voted for you.Kindly spare your time to vote and review mine here- http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2223.All the best hats up