Think like a scientist to learn like a scientist

When you simply read the textbook — or for that matter, review your notes or your flashcards — everything makes sense. The reactions all balance, the structures give rise to the functions, the terminology makes etymological sense. It’s not until you close the book and either take an exam or teach a class that you can see the gaping holes in your understanding.

I tell students this several times every semester, and sometimes to illustrate the problem I describe some movie I’ve seen — and how despite how compelling and logical it was while I was in the theater, on the way home some enormous inconsistency invariably became obvious. Like: how come in Minority Report, the Precogs can only see crimes committed within Washington, DC’s city limits? And: in The Matrix Reloaded, how is it that impact with the ground will kill Trinity (after she falls from a skyscraper), but not impact with Neo, who has to fly from halfway around the world to catch her and is therefore traveling at a much greater speed than the ground’s speed relative to the falling Trinity?

The problem these days is that I hardly see movies anymore. (I blame fatherhood and increasing all-around boringness.) So hooray for GeekDad, who’s put together a top-10 list of gaping geeky plot holes. My favorite:

The intelligent machines have all humans hooked up to elaborate devices to harvest their body heat and chemicals, right? But they also have sophisticated fusion reactors. The energy production of fusion reactors compared to that of humans (with all the maintenance required, including The Matrix itself) is so much more efficient it’s just ridiculous — and we’re supposed to believe that intelligent machines, which would presumably operate logically, would keep the humans around anyway?

My own version of the Mystery of the Matrix manifested itself like this: when Neo first sees the true world, doesn’t it seem that even just the machinery dedicated to each human being would consume much more electricity than any one human could generate? Especially since each human is using plenty of brainpower to experience the Matrix. Clearly I don’t know how to enjoy some movies. Or more likely: by taking internal consistency seriously, I know how to enjoy movies that much more.