How about every crime lab is sparkly clean, well lit and filled with brand new instruments. Come on, when I started working in my lab almost 5 years ago, we didn’t even have computers for our HPLCs, we used old intergrators, early 80s tech. And we make money on our product.
Sure they may have a new gizmo or two, but usually you can only fit in one or two instruments a year and have a lot of older stuff sitting around.
For the most part, I’m able to suspend my disbelief for the CSI series because it would be rather dull if it were too realistic, but one particular bit, where a couple coming from Minn. to NYC to see if a dead boy was theres was annoying. When they found out that the body wasn’t their son they asked Gary Sinese’s character, “You’re not looking for our son, are you?”. He gets this shameful look and admits, “No, we’re not.” I shouted at the TV, “That’s because your the freaking forensics unit, not missing persons!”. Sheesh.
The only show that really takes me out of the plot for their horrible and grotesque mingling of facts would be Joan of Arcadia. For instance, her brother some how used a computer simulation to dissprove Heisenberg’s Uncertanity Principle. I really do not remember any of them, since I really like the show otherwise, but damn if it isn’t some of the most annoying quasi-sci on any modern television show.
Not really a “lie”, and I’m afraid I don’t have a cite, but I remember reading years ago that American police dramas were popular enough in France that it was causing some problems in their legal system. Some French citizens were demanding rights they didn’t have under French law, refusing to cooperate with police who were following proper French procedure but not US procedure, trying to “plead the Fifth” in court, and so on.
It has been a long time since I saw Jurassic Park, so I am not 100% sure this is the way the scene happened, but it is the way I remember it.
SOmebody is on an elctrified fence that is turned off. Then it is turned on and they get a jolt right off the fence. Hoewver, if no part of their body was touching the ground (or anything else touching the ground, i.e. a branch) then the electrified fence should have no effect on them.
I see this constantly on t.v. and in movies. There’s a school bully who picks on the protagonist every day. The protagonist finally stands up to the bully, who immediately retreats, never to bother the protagonist again. It’d be nice if things really worked that way, but c’mon…
Joan, Luke and the gang do not attend an advanced Physics/Chemistry class. They instead attend a ‘How not to Teach Sciences’ class which demonstrates how a teacher trying to be hip fails to actually teach real science.
Yeah, right. Stand up to the bully and he/she will respect you and, heck, even become your friend. (e.g./ Richie’s near fight in the alley with the Fonz).
As if! Try again: Stand up to the bully. After all of two seconds the element of surprise wears off and you get pummeled into the dirt, an atomic wedgie, and you have to have your friends big brother escort you to and from school for months so you don’t get tormented to death.
I remember thinking the same thing when I saw Jurassic Park. Then, a few years later, I helped a farmer friend fix the electric fences around his fields.
In addition to the electrified strands of wire, my friend had one or two “ground” strands running alongside the electrified ones. Normally, he explained, the cow or horse would be standing on the ground anyway (and thus would get a shock), but just to make sure, he had the ground strands in place also. An animal pushing on the electrified and ground strands at the same time would certainly get a shock.
So if the scientists of Jurassic Park were thinking like my farmer friend, they might well have had electrified and ground strands of wire in the fencing, allowing a person on the fence to get jolted without touching the ground. Although I’m sure the jolt a dinosaur would get would be far more than my friend used to warn his horses and cows. Which wasn’t much of one at all.
Actually, it *did * happen that way for me in junior high. I stood up to the guy who’d been tormenting me for over a year and slugged him a few times with half of the guys in the eighth grade watching. He never bothered me again. In fact, by the end of the year, he was pretending like he and I had been great friends all along.
It may be overplayed in movies and TV, but it does actually happen sometimes.
Which is lucky because the charge, according to the sign on the fence, was 10,000 volts. If that kind of charge had actually gone through his body, he would have been a crispy critter instead of a slightly stunned, but otherwise unharmed, kid.
Yeah, but you threw punches. On TV, the kid just shows up and talks peacenik stuff like “I know you’re only want to beat the crap out of me because you’re really just a frightened boy inside. I think you’re good enough, and smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like you. Can’t we just all get along?”
The Simpsons has always had a knack for turning clichés upsdie down and end over end. So did Firefly which tended to deviate from the expected formula.
Mal is struggling, fighting to the death with the guy that’s been torturing him.
In comes his crew to the rescue, but Zoe tells them to back off…
Zoë: “…This is something the Captain has to do himself.”
Mal (desperately) “No it ain’t!”
Everyone: BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Not neccesarily. It’s amps that kill you, not volts. I know what you’re saying, you’re saying,
“But bouv, Ohm’s law clearly states that V = IR, so the two are directly related by the resistance of the little boy!”
True enough, but we don’t know the resistance. And, if I remember the scene correctly, the little boy was a little wet from rain/dew/dinosaur snot, which means that the electricity would take the path of least resistance, which would be along the wet skin, thus giving him what he got - burns on his hands.
Ya know, I actually replied to your message after seeing you reference Firefly to post that exact sequence before realizing you’d already done it. :smack:
“Know what the chain of command is? It’s the chain I’m going to get and beat you with until you listen to my commands.”
Well, you can also have clear fluid in viral meningitis if there hasn’t been much of a wbc response. And cloudy fluid can also mean that the intern doing the tap hasn’t had that much experience and it was a bit bloody. About the only appearance that will be helpful is if the fluid is xanthochromic (yellow) which indicates prior intracranial bleeding.
Are you sure about that? If I remember my physics correctly, electricity doesn’t just take one path, it flows through all possible parallel paths to some extent. Also, the path through his body is way wider than that along the surface of his skin. Assuming that people are like wires in that respect, there would be much less resistance overall to go through his body than along the edge of his skin.