Movies Vs. The Law of Conservation of Mass
Matter is the tangible existence of all physical objects,
regardless of what shape and size in which they appear. They can come as the
hardest solid objects, or something soft and flexible like paper and
water, and they can be inanimate objects
like rocks and materials, or living matter such as animals, plants and people.
And the matter of an object is measured by mass. According to the law of
conservation of mass, matter cannot be created or destroyed by chemical
reactions or physical transformations. But in the event that they do somehow
change radically, whether in size and volume, or by chemical makeup, the mass
of the resulting matter must be equal to the mass of the prior materials. Even
when the human body grows in size and strength, it occurs slowly and gradually
and is only possible by the consumption and sustenance of nutrients; food eaten
and absorbed into the body.
But what happens when the matter of the object appears to be
shrunken in size and reduced in volume and weight? Where does the mass go if it
cannot simply disappear and reappear? Well, reduction of mass without
convincing explanation is the stuff of fiction, and fiction is where we get
away with stuff all the time. What was that old saying? "It's only a crime
if you get caught." Fiction is, after all, just a story, and stories don't
happen, they are told. They are written by writers, and the best writers can
convince most of their readers. This is no different in movies, where stories
are shown and we actually watch them happen.
One such example of watching mere stories and clearly
impossible transformations happen in front of us is in the Harry Potter films,
based on the novels by J.K. Rowling. The Harry Potter franchise revolves around
a children's school and entire society of witches and wizards, which pretty
much includes the whole package of what you would expect from mere fairytales:
broomsticks defying gravity, creatures of highly implausible evolution, moving
objects without touching or other physical forces, etc. Yes, it's very much
magic, and it's quite strange to use magic in fiction to demonstrate scientific
violation, since explicit fantasy knows what it is, isn't hiding what it is,
and so, on principle, can get away with that sort of thing. But what a lot of
people don't realize is that fundamentally, magic isn't magic unless it has a scientific
reality to interact with, and a realistic audience to convince and amaze. There's
no such thing as flying unless there's gravity, even for flying broomsticks. That's
what magic is: "unreality" happening in reality.
One such example of magic against science is the
transformation between human being and animal. In an early display of a witch's
magical powers, Professor Minerva McGonagall on her first day of instruction,
transforms from a cat to her human form, clothing and everything, demonstrating
not only the ability to change her appearance and size, but also her mass,
weight and genetic composition to that of a cat. Where does all of that mass
go? What kind of highly implausible chemical reaction could have happened to
make such a radical genetic-level change to the very biology and chemistry of
her body? It clearly wasn't merely a change in shape of already existing
matter. A realistic-minded audience would have a more likely chance to ask such
questions, but when a story is not hiding the fact that it is fantasy, the
suspension of disbelief is more than easier, it's pretty much a prerequisite. So
therefore, it is needed that we don't overanalyze the physiology and physics of
a human and a cat and what happened in between.
Fantasy can get away with a lot of things, as long as it has
a solidly established world and reality that tells its audience that stuff like
that can happen. However, there is fantasy, and then there is science fiction. Science
fiction is where stories are told with a more convincing display of science
that currently exists only in theory or is still thus far undemonstrated. This
is pretty much the basis of science fiction, and it's usually told through
feats of technology and space travel that we are expected, and hoped, to
believe can happen in the near or far future. And convincing the audience of
that will require more scientific plausibility, or a really good liar (writer).
Some writers and movies tell it better than others, while others hope not be
asked about the unrealistic applications of science.
Enter Michael Bay! Disappointingly, his infamous 1998 film,
Armageddon, will not be the movie in question. However, his 2007 movie,
Transformers, deals with aliens. Despite how much fun, or old, it would be to
point fingers at Mr. Bay for his ability of scientific reasoning, his
Transformers film franchise deals with a fictitious alien technology, which, to
a degree, should be able to get away with more stuff. But to what degree?
The key characters of the Transformers films are the
transformers; alien robots who have the ability to transform into machines of
approximate equal size, most famously cars and other vehicles. They arrive on
Earth in search of a relic from their home planet, which is a giant building-sized
cube. To Bay's credit, the transformers are very intricately designed to
accommodate for the size and mass of the real life machines and vehicles that
they transform into. But even with the plausibility of fictitious alien
technology and the efforts of shape-changing mass-matching robot designs, the
movie couldn't get away with everything. The conservation of mass was put into
question several times throughout the film franchise.
In the first film, the villainous robot, Frenzy, was small
enough to transform into a radio boombox, which originally matched its
approximate size, until the robot gets beheaded by the heroes, and its still
living head transforms into a Nokia 8800 phone, an item well too small to turn
into simply by reshaping itself. In addition, it restores its body later in the
film by coming into contact with the Allspark cube, which inexplicably has the
ability to create new matter. The Allspark cube itself can defy the laws of
conservation of mass by shrinking itself from the size and weight of a building
to the size and weight that can be carried in the arms of the human
protagonist. Understandably, however, the convincingness of such feats of
mass-changing depends on the audience's choice not to question where all of
that mass disappears to, and the limits and seemingly magical qualities of
alien technology that does not exist in real life.
Finally, there is the fictional conservation of mass that
exists in a more practical medium than magic and technology; the human body,
and in this case, superheroes. Probably the most popular superhero power is
superhuman strength, and that requires beyond-human amounts of muscle mass, and
where that muscle comes from and how to fit it in a human-sized body is the
stuff of science fiction. The films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe continuity
produce several different superheroes, with varying degrees and applications of
muscles.
Probably the most subtle and realistic appearance of
superhuman muscle mass is that of Captain America. He has the body and size of
a typical athlete, and the strength to push cars. He is nowhere near as big and
monstrous as some steroid users, but easily stronger than every one of them,
due to his body being upgraded not only to the peak of potential human muscle,
but also close to the limits of near-perfect physical efficiency and performance.
These extra, super-compressed muscles, however, apparently come, not from food
and sustenance of equal mass, but rather from a chemical serum that
inexplicably overnourishes his originally frail and emaciated body.
Another example of a lot of muscle coming from apparently
nowhere is the Hulk, a superhero who is normally a scientist of average human
body, but when angry, can transform into a green musclebound giant human
perhaps as big as twelve feet tall. He apparently obtained his powers from
exposure to gamma radiation, which, in real life, would not explain where the
actual muscles and extra mass come from and where it disappears to when his
transformation ends and he becomes a seemingly normal human again. As the Hulk, he does get stronger the angrier he gets. Perhaps anger can create matter and add more mass to his muscles?
But probably the most glaring violation of conservation of
mass is Ant Man. This other superhero has the ability to shrink himself to the
size and weight of an ant, but retains his muscle mass in a very condensed
form, allowing him to perform feats of superhuman strength. This is apparently
explained by a technology which allows him to reduce the distance between the
atoms of his body. However, pretty much no further explanation of any kind was
offered, or really even possible, about how he was able to reduce his own
weight to that of an ant, allowing himself to ride on a winged ant. Similarly,
no explanation was given about how he was able to inconsistently change the
weight and density of other objects whose size he changes as well, such as a
military tank, which he was able to shrink and carry around on his keychain,
and a toy train, which he was able to grow into the size of a real-life
locomotive with enough weight and density to break out of a house. Density of
an object is supposed to be equal to mass divided by volume, and the realistic
result of the same amount of mass divided by such massive increase in size and
volume is a very small amount of density, and the object would become rather
fragile and light enough to float away.
And to add even further violation of common sense, Ant Man
was able to shrink even further to below the size of an atom and even quarks;
smaller than the smallest and simplest confirmed particles of matter. In the
climax of the film, he was forced to shrink to subatomic size in order to fit
between the molecules and penetrate the antagonist's high tech armor, allowing
himself to attack the antagonist on the inside. No explanation was given to how
he could defeat his opponent when all he could realistically do is attack the
armor's mechanism one atom or molecule after another, it was never explicitly
confirmed that his own shrinking suit gave him subatomic oxygen to breathe in
the time he was smaller than oxygen itself, and the film also overlooked the
possibility that Ant Man would likely have become a literal black hole by the
rapid rate and amount of his own mass collapsing on itself.
In movies, there is science, there is fantasy, and there is
knowing which is which and knowing what happens when they meet. Sometimes
entire universes are a fantasy and follow different rules, and other times,
it's magic disguised as science for the untrained eye, or confused as science
for the untrained writer. The best movie and the best writers are the ones that
can trick their audiences that it's realistic, or trick them not to ask about
it. Sometimes they freely break the law of conservation of mass, adding mass or
making mass disappear by shrinking and growing objects right in front of
audiences; a rather clever way to pull a disappearing act and getting away with
stuff by hiding in plain sight. And other times, a movie's only hope to create
our suspension of disbelief is to sufficiently entertain us enough to distract
our attention away from reality. Whatever way they do it, some do it better than
others, and others, not as much. Either way, as a movie audience, we can only
hope to hear a good story or a story from a good liar.
My last assignment in the class was creating stereoscopic 3D images (view page). From the blogs I read, the classmates appeared to have really loved this assignment, and I could see why. Our teacher, Mr. Garcia, gave us 3D glasses (the paper ones used in movies), and we shot photos of several things, including ourselves, and edited them to be viewed with the glasses.
