You would be hard-pressed to find a more effective cultural touchstone than film. Whether we are young or old, rich or poor, student or teacher; chances are we’ve gone to the movies. Personally, I think I may be one of those people that goes to the movies a little too much, and it is almost inevitable that they would creep into my teaching as well. You may have heard me discuss the strong effects that tapping into your students’ passions and interests can have on their engagement (Hurt, 2015). It can allow you to break down that invisible barrier that can exist in students’ minds between the science and maths that they learn in class, and the outside world that they go home to. Breaking out a film clip, as part of a class discussion or investigation, is an excellent and reliable way to achieve this.

If you’re a science or maths teacher looking to use film clips in class, there has never been a better time to start than right now. For whatever reason, be it the increase in politicised science or people’s increasing reliance on technology they don’t understand; scientists are no longer relegated to the background in film and television. Gone are the days when a scientist on the silver screen would mutter something vaguely diabolical, push back his tufts of white hair and throw a comically large switch. We have experienced a cultural shift that has now resulted in scientists being played as fully developed and relatable characters (Kirby & Chambers, 2016). One of the more significant examples of this would be in Avengers: Endgame, the highest grossing film of all time (Clark & Lynch, 2018). In a film filled with aliens and monsters, it’s a human engineer who takes centre stage. The film also introduces the concept of a Mobius strip for all you maths teachers out there. If you are a STEM teacher, this all means that you have a deep reserve of moments in film to engage your students with.

The best part is that you don’t even need the science in your clip to be accurate in order for it to be instructive. The main purpose of the clip is to simply engage your students and get them invested in understanding the scientific concept that the clip deals with. There is research that backs this approach up from an academic perspective whether the clip gets the science concept right or wrong (Hillyard, 2007, Ludwig, 2012, Rose, 2007).

Let’s look at one example of a science inaccuracy in a film that makes for a great engagement tool for teaching Year 9 and 10 physics. This particular example comes from the film Gravity (Cuarón, 2013). A movie so steeped in STEM related concepts that its very name is taken from one of the fundamental physical forces of the Universe. Gravity is a gripping tale of an astronaut’s struggle to survive on her own in low earth orbit. Except, if Newton’s laws of motion were to have been obeyed, she never would have been alone in the first place. Our hero, played by Sandra Bullock, watches fellow astronaut George Clooney bravely sacrifice himself by cutting himself loose from a rope that he and Bullock are hanging from, this saving her life. It’s a dramatic scene. Unfortunately for Clooney, he isn’t hanging off a cliff with gravity pulling him down, he’s in space. The more mundane reality is that he would simply bounce back to his fellow astronaut as soon as the rope became taut. I don’t think that would have been quite as epic, but it would have been much more scientifically accurate though.

Presenting a clip of this incident at the beginning of class, and asking whether students think this is what should have happened, is all it takes to engage a class in genuine scientific inquiry. So if you, like me, have ever walked out of a perfectly good film and annoyed everyone by questioning its scientific accuracy; bring that discussion into the classroom. With the proper planning, that may just be the best place for it. 

References

Clark, T., & Lynch, J. (2018, April 5). The 10 highest-grossing movies of all time, including ‘Avengers: Endgame’. Retrieved from Buisness Insider Australia: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/highest-grossing-movies-all-time-worldwide-box-office-2018-4?r=US&IR=T

Cuarón, A. (Director). (2013). Gravity [Motion Picture].

Hillyard, C. (2007). Using Popular Culture to Teach Quantitative Reasoning. PRIMUS, 36-43.

Hurt, J. (2015). Utilizing Students’ Passions and Interests to Create a More Meaningful Research Experience. Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 37-40.

Kirby, D., & Chambers, A. (2016, October 20). The Road to Scientific Imagination: Connections between Science and the Movies. Retrieved from From the Lab Bench: http://www.fromthelabbench.com/from-the-lab-bench-science-blog/2016/10/20/the-road-to-scientific-imagination-connections-between-science-and-the-movies

Ludwig, K. (2012). Using Pop Culture to Teach Biomechanics. Journal of Physical Education, 27-30.

Rose, C. (2007). Biology in the Movies: Using the Double-Edged Sword of Popular Culture to Enhance Public Understanding of Science. Evolutionary Biology, 49-54.