Anyone else think of that every time Ratchet and Bumblebee combine their magnet beam and stinger beams?

Well, it hasn't unfolded the fabric of space and time, destroying the universe.

...yet.

All I think of is the fact that the writers have no idea what "electromagnetism" means. Hint: Electricity and magnetism are the same bloody thing!

Serously, as much as I like the writing and characterization of this show I really with the writers would crack a science book from time to time, especially in a show aimed at kids. It's people who watch stuff like this when they're young that grow up to think that vaccines cause autism and that teaching intelligent design is a good idea.

I don't recall the show ever trying to argue electromagnetism being a separate entity from electricity or magnetism - and electromagnetism is a real word/phenomenon so I don't see it as being incorrect.

It's a lot better than say Spider-Man 2 where Dr. Octopus created freakin' nuclear energy from an atom of Tritium. Now that's fcuking impossible. (-_-)

..as opposed to a genetically-engineered arachnid imparting the proportionate strength and dexterity of a spider unto a human?

And according to your own link...

Precise or not (at least to your standards, Goki), there's far worse "science" out there in Hollywood than Spidey 2..

when they did it the first time I thought they said they'd do that to power up ratchet's magnets.

Every single time Ratchet and the Bee do that, I find myself involuntarily gritting my teeth in NERD RAGE and muttering "Electromagnets do not work that way."

It's one of the very few things about that show that actually @#$@es me off

Electricity + Magnetism =/= Electromagnatism

Yes, I feel the exact same thing.

yeah but that's "science fantasy" if you know what I mean. The spider which bit Peter Parker was a fictional super species that doesn't exist in real life, so as fantastic and ridiculous as the concept may be, it cannot really be directly contradicted by existing science, much like how science cannot directly contradict elves, dragons, fairies, God, the flying spaghetti monster, invisible pink unicorns and Russell's china teapot. All these things are highly improbable (scientifically speaking) but not utterly impossible.

Suggesting that you can create an atomic reaction from an atom of Tritium on the other hand does directly contradict known science and is an absolute impossibility.

Look at Adamantium. A fictional element that is supposedly the hardest metal in the universe. Because it is a fictional element, known science cannot contradict it. Ditto Midichlorians in Star Wars.

If you're going to make up some convenient bullsh!t plot device - or as G1 writer David Wise calls it, the Balonium Factor™, then make it fictional. That way you cannot be factually contradicted!

Look at Shrapnel's Clone Beams™ from the G1 cartoon. That's an absolutely absurdfcuking retarded concept - being able to convert scrap metal into fully functional Transformer clones from purple rays that shoot out from Shrapnel?!? Bollocks! But it's a completely fictional concept - pretty much like sorcery/magic, so it cannot be factually contradicted - so as ridiculous as it is, it works!

I think a lot of these "Balonium Factor" parlour tricks that Transformers have would work a lot better if they just stuck with fantasy explanations instead of trying to hard to tie it in with existing science and then end up contradicting freakin' reality.

Mmm... deus ex machina fresh...


(I'm actually not a fan of Donnie Darko btw - I don't hate the movie but I don't like it either)

Why is this hard to swallow. What should they call an Electro-Magnetic Pulse? Or just an electro-magnet in general. And are naturally occurring magnets full of electricity? I think the idea of electro-magnetism is the idea of giving something that doesn't normally have the properties of magnetism. A piece of metal isn't magnet unless you apply electricity to it.

Wiki-Magnet







How could an atom from anything NOT produce an atomic reaction? There's a reason it's called and "atomic" reaction. It's splitting atoms. Doesn't it matter what kind of atom is being split? Has anyone ever tried to split a tritium atom?

WTF. So if man says it's fact or fiction that's the final, universally accepted rule? In the grand scheme of things man knows dick. Look at our knowledge since the beginning of civilization. How many things were said to be impossible only to be late proven to be quite possible. And how many more things will be proven possible that we're now saying couldn't be? 1,000 years from now are you saying everything that's currently "fact" will still be fact?

Fiction is fiction. It's made up. It only exists because someone threw a bunch of letters together to make it sound real. Because it can't be proven doesn't mean anything.

This has turned into the stupidest "smart" discussion I've ever read.

As stated elsewhere, I'm not a physicist. But I'm less bothered by hydrogen isotopes being used in creating fusion like in the sun (seeing as how fusion in the sun only has hydrogen and helium to use) than I am by a great big giant fusion ball being "drowned" in water.

I just find it exceedingly pedantic to obsess about little factoids the vast majority of audiences neither know or care about, while simultaneously ignoring much more glaring violations of general physical principles that a broader range of the audience is likely to hold in their intuitions. Especially when it's on the basis of "well, technically it's not factually contradicted."

Or the fact that the reaction could be "self-sustaining" to begin with.

This isn't the same thing as Peter getting super powers from a spider-bite, since Peter becoming Spider-Man is the entire premise of the story to begin with so you pretty much just have to take whatever plot device is convenient and run with it (although even that can go too far, such as with the rediculously convoluted explanations for Bruce Banner's transformation into the Hulk in the Ang Lee film.) The fusion stuff, on the other hand, was entirely unnecessary. All that was needed for the plot was for Doc Ock to be working on something that would create an Earth-shattering kaboom if things went wrong. They could've used anything for that but instead they decided to make a complete mockery of a legitimate field of science.

No, I believe they shouldn't cross streams when they do that.


ON TOPIC'D


EDIT: GRAMMAR'D

Heh. I agree with the reason, just not this particular incident. Okay, the "drowning it in the river" bit really did get me -- it woulda been more plausible, or humorous at least, to just say the river is so gross nothing in it can live, including the physical process of nuclear fusion.

In the grand scheme of cinematic history though, I was more offended by the bad URLs, e-mail addresses, and domain names in the first Mission Impossible, or that the machines in the Matrix series could sustain themselves on a closed system of humans that were fed.. themselves (hello? there's NO ENERGY INPUT into this system!)

The thing is, highly advanced science is no different than magic to the average person. Since magic can violate the laws of physics, the average person assumes that highly advanced science can violate the laws of physics as well.

Clarke's Third Law 'D.

The difference being that in the real world, highly advanced science bends the laws but it doesn't break them.

thank you Mr. Mxysptlk.

But the point is, you can't tell the difference.

Little niggle here, as an undergrad physicist. You're thinking of fission. Tritium, and similar light nuclei (as its the nuclear reactions, not the atom as a whole that produce these) will actually react through fusion, where they combine with other light nucllei, to produce heavier nuclei and release shedloads of energy in the process.

And as someone who recently had to do a massive exam on electromagnetism,

electricity and magnetism are not the same thing. However, an electromagnetic wave (i.e. photons), are waves travelling in the direction at right angles to both they're two components, which are also at right angles to each other (in three dimensions), and the two components are the eletric component and the magnetic component.

Electricity and magnetism are very closely linked, but are not the same thing. You can combine the two effects to improve their effectiveness, look at electromagnets produced from a coil of wire. With just the coil, you will have a relatively weak magnetic field. That is the ability of just the electric field. Stick a solenoid of iron, or some other material with soft magnetic properties in there, and the magnet will be increased in strength significantly. Similarly if you wrap a coil of wire around a magnet, then pass a current through it. So bumblebee should probably be able to "power up" rachet's magnetic power with his electricity.

And frankly, its a cool effect to have, and shows that teamwork is the way forward for the autobots.

The thing is, Ratchet doesn't even need Bumblebee's help to generate and EMP. He's got his own EMP blaster-thingy that pops up out of his arm, and he's had it ever since he got it back from Lockdown.

I recall Morpheus explaining the human farm was "combined with a form of fusion" to be self-sustaining.

its not an EMP, thats something else - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse

Although kinda similar, its not the same thing.

Even the fusion explanation is flawed.



Humans "scorched the sky" in order to starve the machines of energy (apparently, these great machines weren't capable of reaching to the uppermost layers of the cloud cover). It was a scorched earth tactic. And the only other source of energy is geothermal. Fusion or not, none of the pieces fit in this picture. The use of humans was purely for dramatic storytelling purposes, nothing else.

In relation to the Matrix use of humans: I did my own retcon of the computers using the humans as a giant neural net processing unit, infinitely more creative because it uses existing living neural processes, namely human brains. The Matrix itself is what connects all these human minds. They kept the lives of the humans within the Matrix as mundane as possible, to allow as much free capacity as possible, without the humans being in a 'too perfect' society, as I believe Smith explained in the movie. Ofcourse, the free humans can only deduce what the Computers do from a distance, so they, with the information, or rather, lack of information they have, constructed the notion that the Computers needed the humans for energy.

Think there was another similar idea along those lines I saw on some board just now (might've even been yours). That's so much easier to swallow than the fusion thing. Not that it really explains the energy problem but perhaps if that hadn't been highlighted in the first place in the movie...