Relativity and Warp Drives
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Relativity and Warp Drives
Space Hoppers
Download film (right-click)Explanation , Physics , Secondary
Just how do you travel faster than the speed of light?
Director's Notes:
This film aims to simply describe how the engines on starships in popular television series work, using Einstein’s general theory of relativity. We used stop motion animation and a variety of different settings for the filming.
SciCast Notes:
I like this film — it’s ambitious, well-constructed, uses a wide range of techniques to good effect, and is just a little bit whimsically ridiculous. Plus ‘Not a real captain’ cracks me up, every time.
We had several films last year that were rather ‘stagey’. Stylistically, they were holdovers from the Institute of Physics’ previous ‘Paperclip Physics’ competition. They were fine as little presentations, but they didn’t really work as films.
This film moves the style on considerably, working with the medium rather than against it. The team aren’t alone in doing that, and now you can start seeing each others’ ideas it’ll be interesting to see how the approach develops next year.
— Jonathan