Hollywood Density: Difference between revisions

== [[Advertising]] ==

* In a case where density is exaggerated rather than underestimated, the Geico gecko recently{{when}} stepped in the cement for a starlette's new Hollywood Walk-of-Fame paving square. He leaves deep tracks in the wet cement, even though such a tiny reptile shouldn't even weigh enough to dimple the surface.

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* In ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'' episode 11, Rose puts a brick-sized gold bar into the bag of her nine-year old daughter Maria, who doesn't react even slightly to the weight that must be close to 60 pounds! However, just a bit later Rosa uses the same bag as a blunt weapon with extreme effectiveness—consistency was just too much trouble, apparently. In the Visual Novel, the ingot is given an approximate weight of, I believe, around 11 kilograms; in addition, it's directly stated that she carries is in a blanket which she later use as a weapon against the {{spoiler|goatmen attacking her and Maria}}

* Averted in ''[[Naruto]]''. The Fourth Kazekage has the power to control gold, but gold is realistically heavy and malleable in this series. Instead of using it offensively, he uses these properties of gold to interfere with his foes' physical attacks, making them heavier.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* ''[[X-Men]]'': Piotr Rasputin has an official weight of 114 kg, and a height of 198 cm. When transforming into his [[Chrome Champion|metal form]], his height becomes 226 cm, while his weight doubles to 228 kg. Assuming these numbers are correct, refers to him turning into metal instead of just gaining a metal coating, his human density is roughly equal to 1 kg/l, his metal form would have a density of 1.35 kg/l, or about half the density of aluminium. The kicker? The metal he transforms into is explicitly compared to osmium, the element with the highest density (22.6 kg/l, or exactly twice as dense as lead). If his metal form actually was osmium, Colossus would weight 3826 kg.

* ''[[Welcome to Tranquility]]'': Minxy builds a plane out of solid gold, and it is specifically mentioned that it will not fly because it is too soft and dense a metal. [[Rule of Cool|It does anyway.]]

 

== [[Film]] ==

* In ''[[Die Hard With a Vengeance]]'', {{spoiler|the trucks loaded with looted gold bullion would not have been able to drive uphill}}. The producers admitted to making this mistake. {{spoiler|They wouldn't have been able to drive at all. In 1995, 150 billion dollars worth of gold should have weighed around 7.000 tons. 13 trucks? 130 would have had trouble carrying that load.}} One thief ''tosses'' a gold bar to another thief. The way it hits him when he catches it, it should've ruptured a few organs. On the other hand, Zeus is ''very'' surprised at how heavy a single gold brick is.

* In ''[[Goldfinger]]'', [[James Bond (film)|James Bond]] releases himself from a handcuff by using two gold bars as makeshift hammers. He later throws a bar through a respectable distance, hitting [[The Dragon|Oddjob]] with it, but not doing any damage since the henchman is [[Made of Iron]]. However, the film has a [[Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene]] where Bond explains to Goldfinger how robbing Fort Knox, even if he killed all the troops stationed there, is impossible. Namely, gold is so heavy that the 15 billion dollars worth at the fort weighs 10,500 tons. That means Goldfinger would need sixty men to load it onto 200 trucks over a period of twelve days while the US military would find out what happened at the fort and move to stop the robbery within 2 hours. From that he concludes that Goldfinger's real plan is to use a nuclear bomb to irradiate the gold, making it unusable for decades and thus making his own gold much more valuable.

* Almost at the end of ''[[The Fog]]'', when Father Malone picks up the gold cross, an object this size made of solid gold should have weighted al least 100 kilograms, probably more. To the credit of the actor, you can see him struggling to carry all this weight, but he shouldn't have been able to carry it alone. Specially problematic is when he lifts the cross with only his arms to hand it to the ghost, and keeps it in this position for a non-trivial amount of time.

* ''[[Battlefield Earth]]'' pretty much treats gold as weighing about as much as steel. It's hard to tell exactly, though, since the antagonist's have an undefined level of super strength, and they're the ones most often seen handling gold.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* In an ''[[Encyclopedia Brown]]'' story, the density of gold was used to prove that the supposed gold ingots were really just bricks spray-painted gold, as there is no way a kid could lift a brick-sized bar of gold with one hand. Although if you're dumb enough to confused a spray-painted brick for real gold...

* In the [[Honorverse]] books it was initially played straight, despite [[David Weber]] [[Shown Their Work|getting quite a bit else right]]. Once fans started pointing out the absurdly low density (on par with cigar smoke) with the largest ships, the numbers were fixed.

** In another story two boys who do not know this yet find come across magical gold which, if picked up, shouldn't be dropped, or all the gold will turn into rock. One boy grabs happily a large lump and suddenly finds it unbearably heavy, but is too afraid to drop it and just warns his friend. The latter picks up much smaller, but still heavy piece and realizes that his friend is way over-encumbered. After an argument, the second boy deliberately drops his lump, so all gold turns into rock and his friend won't hurt himself.

* Damien Lewis's ''[[Cobra Gold]]'' completely averts this, the problem of getting 17 tons of gold out of Beirut is central to the story in the first half, and finding a suitably heavy fake (which turned out to be solid tungsten coated with a thin layer of lead and gold) later on, is included as well. There are numerous mentions of how little space 17 tons of gold actually takes up, but most of their equipment can't handle the heavy load all at once.

* In the first ''[[His Dark Materials]]'' book, Lyra escapes her captors by shaking out a bag of flour, running out of the room, and then waiting for the flour to explode. First, a large bag of flour would be too heavy for someone Lyra's size handle in that manner. Second, individual grains of flour are too heavy to drift in the air for that long a time.

 

* At the other end of the scale, one episode of ''[[CSI]]'' has the team investigating a casino heist, supposedly of ten million dollars in cash. Grissom realizes the money would weigh around two hundred pounds—far too much for one man (seen in security footage) to practically carry. (It isn't stated, but it would also be unfeasibly bulky.)

** The 200 pounds (actually closer to 220) presumes it's all in $100 banknotes. A more normal mix of currency would about double this. A million US dollars in mixed currency fills a large suitcase, and one would probably have to pay over-weight charges to fly with it. $250,000 (in $100 bills) fits carefully into an [[Evil Mastermind]]-syle aluminum attache case.

* Averted, surprisingly, in an episode of ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'', a series not usually known for its scientific accuracy. In an episode in the third season, Egghead steals two pounds of radium in order to hatch a dinosaur egg (see previous comment about scientific accuracy). Egghead handles the box of radium as if it were very heavy—the radium only weighs two pounds, but the lead shielding adds a lot more.

** Played basically straight in another episode—also starring Egghead, coincidentally—he pilfers a giant egg (maybe three feet long) made of solid gold. No one short of the Incredible Hulk should be able to lift that thing, but Egghead picks it up and carries it out, though he's straining with the effort and can't lift it above his waist.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* Classic ''[[BattleTech]]'' rated [[Humongous Mecha]] by their total mass. Which is fine as far as it goes, but the fluff assigned height and width values to several of the more iconic chassis that would leave them with a low enough density to float on water. (I'm looking at you Atlas)

* First Edition ''[[Dungeons & Dragons|Advanced Dungeons and Dragons]]'' actually went too far in the ''opposite'' direction: All coins were assumed to weigh a whopping 1/10 of a pound each. This would make one Gold Piece bigger and heavier than almost any gold coin known to exist in real world history.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* Lampshaded in the ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro ni]]'' fan novel [[RPG Episode|"Witches and Woodlands."]] Those who wager their weight in gold in [[Greed|Mammon's]] trial and lose are [[Taken for Granite|turned into gold statues]] to pay the debt. George protests that the density of gold means that the statues would weigh more than the living victims. [[Game Master|Beatrice]] hastily handwaves it by saying that the statues are hollow before muttering, "Damn, I hate science! Always messing with my magic."

 

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20150428205529/http://www.airshipentertainment.com/growfcomic.php?date=20070506 These] two [https://web.archive.org/web/20150428205532/http://www.airshipentertainment.com/growfcomic.php?date=20070513 pages] of ''[[What's New with Phil and Dixie]]'' feature exercises for ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' players to get a feel of what they put their characters through without a second thought. Number 1 is acquiring treasure, demonstrated with bowling balls.

 

== Web Original ==

* An otherwise hilarious [[SCP Foundation]] [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5308-j entry], its humor relying on the fact that every single object described {{spoiler|is perfectly ordinary with no strange or supernatural properties whatsoever}}, is ruined by a cube of granite "twenty centimeters on a side" weighing "nearly 2.5 kilograms". That gives it a density roughly that of ''styrofoam''.

 

== Western Animation ==

* In [[The Stinger]] at the end of ''[[Finding Nemo]]'', the water in the fish bags floats above the water in the ocean.

* ''[[Futurama]]''

* ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'' is never terribly consistent about whether the characters are in a water-like medium or an air-like medium.

* ''[[Puss in Boots (animation)|Puss in Boots]]'' averts this in the scene where the heroes discover the golden eggs—they're too heavy for any of them to lift a single one, so they take the goose that laid them instead. It's played straight in every other scene with gold, where dozens of those same eggs are carried around in a single cart and casually thrown around, as well as Puss-in-Boots's flashback where Humpty is able to move around two huge bags of gold.

 

== Real Life ==

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Artistic License Physics]]

[[Category:Hollywood Science]]

[[Category:Reality Is Unrealistic]]

[[Category:Hollywood Style]]