Though physics is one of the most immutable laws of the universe,
all kinds of rules and laws are broken for the sake of entertainment. I'll be
looking at live action and video game media examples that
choose to interpret a specific law of physics in a way that is unrealistic.
That is, the law of the conservation of mass.
The conservation of mass usually can be subtle in its misuse. Due
to our exposure to things in media that include such things as transmogrifying magical
things, it's become a generally accepted suspension of disbelief to watch
things grow or shrink in size. When this law is broken in a universe that
purports to otherwise have a rather realistic physical world, it is
interestingly obvious to much of the audience that something in wrong. I will
be looking at a few items in the entertainment industry that break this law in
an unironic and obvious manner. When the conservation of mass law is violated,
it has a tendency to be obvious and raise some brows for the audience even
without knowing exactly how it works.
The video game Resident Evil is a zombie game starting in the year
1996, and was one of the first arcs in the horror genre of videogames. The
series takes a lot of liberties with the way explosives and biohazardous
weapons are treated, but otherwise characters are subject to a world built on
earth that generally conforms with a similar physical situation as earth. In
terms of mass, generally the beheading of zombies and destruction of other
creatures equals out to the same amount of “stuff” left over on screen as
indicators of the same amount of mass then being scattered. There is a willing
suspension of disbelief there. There is, however, a point in the series that is
glaringly obvious to many people, players or no.
Using nothing but a biohazard virus, a normal-sized man, Derek
Simmons, turns into a literal tyrannosaurus rex. By an estimation of Simmon's
height, he is a little over the average height of the men around him, so he
could be about a 6'4" height, if generous. The maximum weight for this
height is 205lbs. The weight of the fluid added to his body could not be more
than 1mL. His pants do not generally disappear when he transforms back, so it
can be assumed that they become part of his transformation. The pants would add
about 1lb if average. A tyrannosaurus is estimated to be about 9 tons
(18,ooolbs) minimally. If we are generous with it, that still weighs
eighty-seven times more than what the man probably weighed.
Simmons turns into this dinosaur creature with no visual cue of
absorbing any matter to grow to this size, but due to the creature's ability to
crush cars underfoot and flip buses, it can be deduced that it is meant to have
comparative weight to a dinosaur. Later, he turns into a large tarantula
creature as well, but he does so by absorbing other bodies, partially
accounting for the increase in weight then, but not by much. The most glaring
dismissal of this law of physics is that there is no attempt to explain it.
This is one way a piece in media can take when dealing with disregarding the
conservation of mass law; without alluding to or giving any attempt to explain
it. It’s so blatant that it feels like a reliance on the audience’s forgiveness
or for the audience to overextend its suspension of disbelief for the physics
to be somewhat excusable for the game. Most media at least tries to have a
foothold in science nowadays when attempting to sell an idea to audiences; such
as the movie in the next example.
In a famous childhood movie, Honey,
I Shrunk the Kids, the movie attempts to explain a massive reduction of the
size of four normal-sized teens. It uses the explanation that the shrinkage is done
by reducing the space between subatomic particles which are taken as
"empty space" as explained by the movie. It is of course not as
simple as this, but the writers were trying.
There is not necessarily "empty" space between subatomic
particles; as I understand it. It is more that the particles are spread out
along these empty spaces as "smears" to cover all these gaps between
in varying time. Not only that, depending on what substance it is, the space
between particles differs. In gases and in space there's much more room between
particles, but in solids, the space between atoms may be as small as atomic
particles themselves.
If you go with the idea, however, that it was possible to remove
all this seemingly empty space to shrink a person, there still remains that the
mass is conserved. The mass of the people would have been unchanged, making
them extremely dense people at the miniature size that they were shrunk to.
Their weight would have remained the same with their mass being the same on
earth. Therefore, they would not have been flying around and taking the risk of
being whisked up by lawnmowers as in the movie, essentially removing the plot.
This is another way that physics has been treated; by taking a cursory
understanding of the science of something and attempting to blow it into
something else to fit a plot. This is at least a shallow attempt to make the
physics of the world a little more believable for the audience. There is another way to make the world more
immersive while having even less realistic physics, however.
The sci-fi work Star Trek
(2009) is something that hinges most heavily on a basis of science and
physics and this movie in particular focuses greatly on supernovas and black
holes. The mass of objects and how they are affected by black holes is crucial
to the plot. What is unknown to both the writers and much of the audience is
that black holes are limited directly by their mass.
At the beginning of the movie, there is a
supernova which is stopped by dropping a black hole into it. First of all,
the aftermath of a supernovae tend to create black holes, so it is questionable
as to how it would reverse an exploding star when the amount of red matter used
to do this turns out to be a single drop.
The black hole creations of the movie circle around this substance
called red matter that that turns whatever it touches into a black hole (except
its holding container). The movie universe, however, takes the false liberty of
assuming a black hole is an endless vacuum not limited by its own mass. Another
example of this red substance is when it hits a spacecraft, it turns the
spacecraft into a black hole, but that black hole should be limited by its
mass... which would be equal to the spacecraft and only be able to suck in
things at a radius of the spacecraft. It has been considered that it could be
the red matter itself that has the mass necessary to create bigger black holes
than the matter it is turning into a black hole, but it isn't really treated in
this way in the film by how everyone is able to carry it around with minimal
equipment.
This disregard for conservation of mass is built up more
believably in Star Trek, however. It is built in such a way so that this red
matter is more easily overlooked than the shrinking or growing of the two first
examples. As stated in the beginning, it tends to be obvious, but Star Trek
manages to make it less obvious by how it frames its pseudoscience in its
world. The way Star Trek treats
the conservation of mass, in this case, is relying on the audience to not be
informed enough about its subject matter. The real physicality of black holes
and supernovas may not be fully grasped by the audience, so the movie can take
advantage of this by framing its story in a believable manner at least. A piece
of work can get away enjoyably with violating the laws of physics.
Generally, the law of the conservation of mass is not usually
violated in an obvious manner, but when it is, it can be disorienting for
audiences. Lots of laws of physics are bent or ignored for drama or effect,
especially suspending the disbelief of the audience realistically. Sometimes,
however, even the audience can be tipped off to the lack of realism when done
so blatantly or ungracefully as Resident Evil 6. It can detract from a story
rather than enhance it. Resident Evil 6
chose to hand-wave the science and depend on the audience to forgive it for its
lack of realism, but the audience finds it distractingly obvious. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids starts off with
a basis of science and has to ignore the real science in order to be able to go
through the plot. Star Trek, however,
ignores science even moreso than Honey, I
Shrunk the Kids, but it is able to pull off its idea by using certain
techniques. It does it by relying on preconceived notions in the audiences mind,
using a more immersive story, and by using distracting drama. If that is the
case, however, it makes for an entertaining piece of media. That’s more the point of how to incorrectly
use physics, one would think.
