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== They did something to the popcorn besides shoot it with a laser to get it to rupture the house. ==
Genetically altered superpopcorn? Maybe it wasn't real popcorn at all, but super-expansive foam kernels with greater force and resilience to crushing force than mere ''Zea mays averta''. The science group may even have weakened the roof and wall seams of the house just to get the desired effect. Just because [[
* If you recall, Ick had shown off genetically engineered jumbo cherries earlier in the film. Not too much of a stretch to believe that he came up with a super breed of popcorn and maybe worked with Jordan to make the optimal giant Jiffy Pop tin.
** Concurrently, upon learning about Hathaway's aversion to popcorn, Chris had Ick create a super breed of popcorn for use in a (possible) small scale prank, and later decided to one-up the prank upon learning of Hathaway's treachery.
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** Also, the only thing the Congressman had been told was that he was needed for a discussion with Dr. Meredith on something of 'critical international importance', and that the evidence was at Hathaway's house. Since that statement is literally true - the dynamite laser is such a matter, and the evidence of its existence is indeed inside Hathaway's house in the form of Hathaway's lab notes and paperwork - there is plausible deniability on the part of whatever mysterious parties decoyed the Congressman there that they had any foreknowledge of an incoming laser beam.
* Likewise, the fact that the kids knew about the existence of the secret project cannot be used as evidence against them. Of ''course'' they knew about it -- they were the people who'd originally invented it, at the project director's own request!
* tldr; While the kids are certainly suspects, there is nowhere near enough evidence to actually make a conviction stick beyond reasonable doubt, and given the major egg on face the laser project has already there are vanishingly small odds that they will ''want'' to make a federal case out of it. This would of course change and the government would want their skulls on pikes if they ever found out that they'd deliberately sabotaged the project... but the protagonists left behind no evidence pointing to them, and it is arguable if the government will even ''suspect'' sabotage.
== It was a straightforward [[Happy Ending]]. ==
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Hathaway is just about the only person who doesn't get a happy ending. He doesn't have a house, and the government audits him for the money that was spent on the laser project (which, if you recall, he instead embezzled to fix up his house). He probably will also be brought before a board at Pacific Tech, and will lose his tenure and his job.
* Caveat: the accident investigation team taking the laser apart to try and find out why it fired off-course and then melted will find the traces of grease on the lens, which will tell them why it melted. They likely ''won't'' find the cause of the firing off-course, but since there is no hardware fault for them ''to'' find (as it was a deliberate software error introduced by the chip switching), the most probable conclusion for them to reach is the true one; that the targeting failure was
** Especially since the project has already succeeded in achieving the desired theoretical breakthrough; getting 5+ megawatt bursts of power out of a laser in readily weaponizable form. At this point the only thing left is to perfect the targeting system, and that's the easy part. Aiming a speed-of-light line-of-sight weapon is a mathematical and engineering problem an order of magnitude simpler than trying to, oh, hit an incoming anti-ship missile with a 20mm cannon shell in mid-air with virtually zero time to aim -- and that's a job the Phalanx mount on any US Navy warship has been able to do for the past 30 years.
** There is also that they have at least one successful static test result (the lab firing) to tell them that the beam comes straight out of the business end, meaning that they know if the beam went off-course its because the laser was pointed the wrong way -- not because the things shoots beams randomly sideways.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Wild Mass Guessing/Film]]
[[Category:Real Genius]]▼
[[Category:WMG]]
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