Summer SAVY, Session 3 Day 1, “Finding “Faults” in Media: The Geology of Disaster Movies” (7th-8th)
Hello SAVY Parents! We had an exciting first day today as we got into the swing of the class! Today was mainly focused on Earth Structure and Plate Tectonics, which the students learned about before watching the day’s movie clips. Several of the students were already familiar with the plate tectonic concepts, and those who were not caught on quickly. I’m glad to know they are keeping things they’ve learned during the school year close at hand. This included a demo of plate tectonics using Graham crackers and Cool Whip that I hope your child will be eager to tell you all about! After our brief lecture, we watched selected clips from The Core and Journey to the Center of the Earth. The students followed along as our “terranauts” in The Core dove deep below the surface to restart the outer core’s circulation and save humanity, and then as the volcanologist and crew in Journey to the Center of the Earth discovered the world that was hidden at — you guessed it — the center of the Earth.
Following the movie clips, we spent some time diving into the inaccuracies of what we saw using the new knowledge of the Earth system that they had gained as a frame of reference. We discussed if it made sense to go into the core in the locations that they chose, if it seems possible for there to be a void space (and an entire ecosystem) at immense pressure, and what the evolutionary implications are for the world at the center of the Earth and the organisms residing in it.
In the afternoon, we worked through some discussion questions about the “Broader Impacts” of the way that science is depicted in movies. We discussed how the portrayal of science could influence people whose only real contact with scientific concepts is via movies, and how different movies have different inaccuracies, which makes deducing the truth difficult. Lastly, the students selected one of the scenes that we had watched from the movies and rewrote it so that the science was more accurate. Some students decided that it wasn’t realistic for the characters to survive their various catastrophes, and some went further back in the logic by addressing the inaccuracies at the heart of the movie premise itself.
To continue learning at home, you can ask your kid what their favorite movie that we watched today was, and what scientific facts and inaccuracies are included in that film. You can also look through the book that was handed out at the end of class, which dives deeper into Earth’s Structure and the layers of Earth that we talked about.
Tomorrow we will be discussing disasters and hazard vs risk, and we’ll be watching clips from San Andreas and Dante’s Peak. We will dive deeper into the relationship between media depictions and public perception as well. I look forward to working with your kids the rest of the week and know we have a lot of fun ahead of us!
Best,
Dr. Rodgers