One of the problems with Tower Heist

I can admit to having not seen the movie Tower Heist. I'm okay with that fact since the reviews generally weren't all that positive.

To give you the relevant summary, a bad Alan Alda has stolen money from lots of people including the employees of the building in which he lives via a ponzi scheme. The employees break into his apartment to steal back the money only to find the safe empty. Luckily, they happen to scratch the paint job on vintage Ferrari in the apartment and find that it's made of solid gold.

Bad science ensues.

In the above clip, nebbishy Matthew Broderick does some quick math and states that the car weighs 2000 lb at $1872 per ounce of gold which makes for about $45 million.

The math doesn't even check out as 200lb x 16oz/lb x $1872/oz = $59.9 million...even allowing the 'give or take ten million,' that's lazily off.

But the issue here is that a 2000lb car made of steel, rubber, and glass wouldn't translate to the same weight in gold since steel, rubber, and glass have different densities than gold.

2000 lb of gold would make for a cube roughly 14 inches on a side because gold is way more dense than steel, rubber, or glass. If the Ferrari were actually made of gold, it wouldn't be 2000 lb; it would be more like more than - according to one article I found - 10,000 lb...because gold is very dense.

Which would lead to so many problems in the subsequent scenes when the team tries to lower the Ferrari down on a rope, swing it into an apartment being renovated, and then has to pull the Ferrari back up the roof where a single person unhooks it and drops it into the rooftop pool.

Oh, spoilers...

None of that would be possible with a solid gold Ferrari weighing in excess of five tons.

Then, in the touching end scene, each of the building's employees gets a chunk of the solid gold mailed to them - a grill, a wheel, a bumper - all of which are easily delivered by a friendly UPS-type man...and each of which would weight hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

Shipping would be pricey.

Metal in Movies is WRONG

I know that you'll be shocked to hear this, but sometimes things in movies aren't real.

Go ahead, take a moment to let that sink in, to let the shock wear off.

In today's video Nate From the Internet addresses times when metals aren't dealt with appropriately in movies - primarily because of the density of heavy metals like gold and because of the black body radiation that should be given off when metals are hot.

I had noticed a couple of these myself - the 'molten' gold in The Hobbit and the weight of gold in The Italian Job 'remake' - but neither took me took much out of the movie. In the case of The Hobbit, it's because I wasn't enjoying the movie anyway. In the case of The Italian Job, it's because the cast is just so darn charismatic that I enjoyed the movie anyway.

How the Demon Core Killed a Man in 9 Days

The demon core is a legendary sphere of plutonium gallium alloy that was designed to be - when encased in neutron reflectors like beryllium or tungsten - just a hair away from achieving critical mass and releasing massive amounts of radiation.

That idea of making something that is just a tiny accident away from releasing deadly anything was - in retrospect - perhaps a mistake. 

The demon core became known as such because of two deadly incidents, the second of which is retold in the above video, fictionalized in the below clip from the movie Fat Man and Little Boy, and more thoroughly examined in the third video from Kyle Hill.

Check all the videos out and maybe remember not to build a gun that shoots bullets out in every direction while giving it a hair trigger, eh?

The Real Story of Oppenheimer

In case there's anybody out there who hasn't seen Oppenheimer at this point, I strongly recommend it.

Critics have been raving about it. It was half of a cultural event last summer. It's not 100% accurate - though it is largely factual. It isn't without criticism, but it's a great film.

With all that being said, there's so much more to the story of Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. Do yourself a favor and watch the above video from the Veritasium YouTube channel.

And, if you want to know more, move onward to Fallout by Jim Ottaviani and American Prometheus by Bird and Sherwin.

Oppenheimer was a fascinating, brilliant man whose effect on our world is almost immeasurable, and he is a compelling source for a movie, a graphic novel, or a biography.

Chemist Breaks Down 22 Chemistry Scenes From Movies & TV | WIRED

I'm a sucker for these 'expert-watches-tv-and-movies-and-comments' style of videos.

In order, you get...

• Breaking Bad - HF isn't the best choice for dissolving a body, and Walt should wear goggles.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Don't huff gasoline.
• Rick & Morty - Their recipe for oven-less brownies isn't real. Shocking, eh?
• Spider-man: Homecoming - Carbon makes four bonds...not two or one. I actually, kind of disagree here because organic chemists often omit the hydrogens in their drawing. I've done the demo she does at 4:00. We do it in our material science class at Princeton every year.
• Black Panther - Vibranium isn't real, but elements do come to Earth via asteroid.
• Breaking Bad - Walt and Jessie wear good PPE when cooking meth, and the synthesis uses real glassware and procedures - but maybe not for meth.
• Zoolander - Don't have a gas fight, but luckily you would likely need a bigger spark to make that explosion.
• Christmas Vacation - Sewer gas maybe could explode, especially hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), but probably not like it shows.
• Con Air - Cigarettes dropped into a trail of gasoline isn't going to make a fire like that.
• Community - Chloroform doesn't act that quickly.
• Blow - Chemists to test for purity with melting points. That's f'real...but the instrument shown is odd.
• Fight Club - Lye doesn't burn like that. Acids burn more like that.
• The Big Bang Theory - I've already said I hate this show, but their science is pretty good here. Elephant toothpaste is f'real.
• Spider-man - "It's just garbage."
• Chernobyl - "His explanation of a nuclear reactor is beautiful. I love it."
  
• Chernobyl - Yes, xenon is useful in nuclear reactors, and hydrogen explosions really happened in Chernobyl.
• Mr Bean: The Whole Bean - Mr Bean should wear goggles, and his glassware is all set up backwards.
• Terminator 2: Judgement Day - A liquid metal frozen in liquid nitrogen could cause shattering...maybe...but it wouldn't look like that.
• Radium Girls - Very accurate and sadly deadly
• National Treasure - There are invisible ink recipes, but the movie version is fakey.
• Casino Royale - Sodium cyanide is very soluble. Could work, might make Bond look sickly like that. There's more to neutralizing the poison than the movie shows.
• The Rock - VX nerve agent is real but doesn't look like that. The green beads are pretty but not real.
• The Martian - Yeah, you could burn hydrazine like that - at least chemically - but it would likely explode like it does in the movie. He should have way more PPE to use it.

From what I've read, Kate the Chemist's bona fides seem to be f'real, too. Her squeals during her demos, though, don't do it for me.