My degree is in chemistry - it doesn't show up very often in film and TV, but when it does, it's usually wrong.
I vaguely recall an episode of the X-Files, where Scully, a medical doctor with physics training, takes a fairly simple NMR spectrum from a scientist, shows it to Mulder, saying in serious scientific tones, "This is a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrograph."
Mulder, a psychologist, says something like, "But this chemical is ten years beyond our technology!"
And I thought, it shows hydrogen atoms relative to each other on a carbon framework. How the hell do you work that out?
Then they showed the molecule on a computer screen, because you can do that, in TV-land, go straight from a printed spectrum to a 3D computer program.
As near as I could tell, the compound was ethanol, or something similarly small and simple. Which was fair, because the NMR was clearly also of something small and simple.
The mistake wasn't so much the science - it was a sf show - so much as trying to create an aura of scientific realism, badly.
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Date: 2009-04-30 05:29 am (UTC)I vaguely recall an episode of the X-Files, where Scully, a medical doctor with physics training, takes a fairly simple NMR spectrum from a scientist, shows it to Mulder, saying in serious scientific tones, "This is a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrograph."
Mulder, a psychologist, says something like, "But this chemical is ten years beyond our technology!"
And I thought, it shows hydrogen atoms relative to each other on a carbon framework. How the hell do you work that out?
Then they showed the molecule on a computer screen, because you can do that, in TV-land, go straight from a printed spectrum to a 3D computer program.
As near as I could tell, the compound was ethanol, or something similarly small and simple. Which was fair, because the NMR was clearly also of something small and simple.
The mistake wasn't so much the science - it was a sf show - so much as trying to create an aura of scientific realism, badly.