#Artistic licence physics series
#Artistic licence physics tv

#Artistic licence physics tv

TV also ignores the other hazards of volcanoes and lava flows, such as toxic gases, heavy ash fall, and deadly pyroclastic flows thundering down from the volcano's summit. Note that this trope covers heat radiation as well, and seeing as large explosions create shockwaves as well as fireballs, this also covers Overpressure Schmoverpressure. Instead, heat seems to propagate more like electricity - mostly just via conduction, so as long as you don't actually touch the source, you're okay. note How does no weather, no ability to reduce your body temperature, and no marine life sound? Worse still, that's just the beginning of what would happen. The hero is traveling through the Lethal Lava Land, but there are floating rocks, so he can make it across! Even though realistically, the heat from the lava should have already cooked him anyway, rocks or no rocks.Ĭonvection, the process by which a liquid or gas (like air) forms currents that very quickly spread heat from a hot thing to its environment, apparently doesn't exist in fiction land, even though Earth would be a horrible place without it. Most writers and video game developers, however, forget this. This applies to anything that's even mildly hot. With a sense of relief, I settled into that groove, culminating on the final day with an exhibit of B&W photographs entitled I’ve been welcomed back to KITP every year since, each time with a unique project in the works.- Mike Nelson, The Last Airbender RiffTraxĮver stood next to, or put your hand near a fire? You should feel heat emanating from it without needing to touch anything. I became an inconspicuous, non-intrusive observer of the unfolding daily drama.

I sought and was granted permission by David to do what I do best: observe and record the performances during that first six-week residency through the lens of my camera, just as I did in my early 20s as a rock concert photographer. I began to think of each lecture as a performance of sorts where I didn’t understand the lexicon.

#Artistic licence physics series

I quickly realized, upon entering the darkened lecture hall to observe the daily presentations, that I was basically watching a series of foreign films - without subtitles. Upon reflection I realized that I was invited to KITP to share my world view, not to try to dazzle present and future Nobel laureates with my utter lack of knowledge about theirs. It was at that moment that I began to ponder David’s final request my awe turned to trepidation. As I left that meeting in an afterglow to find my office, I noticed that every square inch of available wall space in the contemporary Kohn Hall was lined with old-fashioned slate blackboards, covered with incomprehensible (at least to me) white chalk squiggles. Before I left that short meeting, I had keys to an office (with my name on the door), an invitation for my wife and me to join David and Lars Bildsten for dinner the next evening with a leading authority on Albert Einstein, and finally, a request to deliver a noontime “blackboard talk” the following week to all of KITP’s visiting scientists.Īs a photographer and filmmaker, I have developed a keen eye for observation. The answer became apparent when, immediately upon arrival, I was warmly received and ushered into the office of then-director and Nobel-laureate, David Gross. I was curious to learn the secret behind KITP’s cross-disciplinary notoriety how is it that this place not only attracts the world’s greatest physicists to share great ideas, but also welcomes visiting journalists, producers, playwrights and artists like myself to observe and participate in the harmonic convergence?įay Dowker, Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London. There’s nothing else quite like it in our universe.

But less well known is the fact it likewise stands apart as a naked singularity for those of us in science-oriented arts and letters. This Michael Graves-designed mecca, spectacularly perched on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, is of course world-renowned in the field of theoretical physics. I didn’t really know quite what to expect.

It was the spring of 2012 when I entered Kohn Hall for my first day as visiting KITP artist-in-residence. Leonard Susskind, Professor of Physics at Stanford University.