Misconceptions from the Movies - mental_floss on YouTube (Ep.3)

Hi, I'm Elliot. This is Mental Floss on YouTube. Today I'm going to talk about some misconceptions

that movies taught you. Alright, misconception number one. There's sound in space. In Star Wars and Armageddon

explosions make a lot of noise just like us on Earth would expect them to. As I'm sure you

remember from high school science class though, sound is made up of waves that need to travel

through something. Space, on the other hand, is a near vacuum, so we wouldn't hear sound when things

explode, which in a way is actually a lot scarier. Misconception number two, a car door will protect

you from a bullet. What would an action movie be without the protagonist using his car door as a

shield while shooting at the bad guys? Well, it turns out that bullets can actually go just straight

through car doors. They're not great shields. That protagonist is either dead or like a wizard

Misconception number three, shooting the gas tank will make a car explode. Another car-related one

yay. In The Matrix Reloaded, Mission Impossible 2, and like countless other action films

a bullet will hit a car right in the gas tank, inevitably causing the car to explode

In reality, the bullet will likely just travel straight through the gas tank and out the other

side of the car. I find this to be very disappointing. Speaking of explosions

misconception number four. Cigarette plus gasoline equals major explosion. Sorry, fans of Zoolander the usual suspects and the birds but a lit cigarette isn going to cause an explosion In 2007 researchers at the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms tested this idea

They dropped a burning cigarette into a tray of petrol, or they sprayed petrol out of a lit cigarette 2,000 times

The petrol caught on fire exactly zero times. When asked about the misrepresentation of this phenomenon in Hollywood, the leader of the study said

actually, they're pretty well aware of it. They don't care. Hollywood! Misconception number five, you get an automatic 4.0 if your college roommate commits suicide

This idea was the premise of two 1998 films. There was Dead Man on Campus as well as The Curve

And I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you that Mark Paul Gossler fooled you once again

No college in the U.S. has any such policy. According to Snopes, this probably just started out as a joke in, like, the mid-1970s

when people had really sick senses of humor. And the next thing you know, Matthew Lillard was out to get his roommate

Okay, have I dropped enough, like, 90s celebrity names on you? Judge Ryan. Okay, moving on. Misconception number six, tracing a call takes 60 seconds. I'm sure you

know this trope well from movies like Thelma and Louise or Catch Me If You Can. Basically, someone

has to keep another person on the line for 60 seconds so that the police or the FBI can trace

the call. This was the case until like the 1980s. Now, call tracing happens immediately, even with

cell phones because due to a 2006 FCC order they almost come with a way to track the phone within 100 feet Big Brother is watching Misconception number seven Asteroid fields are dense with objects According to C the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field

is approximately 3,720 to 1. Actually, he miscalculated those odds a little bit

In 2006, NASA sent out a space probe called New Horizons toward Pluto

New Horizons went through the asteroid belt, which contains a few dwarf planets

as well as millions of debris bits and boulders. But they're all so far apart

According to the lead scientist for New Horizons, it had less than a one in a billion chance of colliding with anything

C3PO, you're so dumb. Misconception number eight. Pretty much everything about amnesia

This condition is represented in, like, every film about amnesia, from 51st Dates to the Bourne trilogy to Hitchcock's Spellbound

In many films, a character suffers from amnesia, but only retrograde amnesia

which means forgetting events that happened before the injury or incident that caused amnesia

In reality, that person would also probably have trouble learning new information as well, which they rarely do in these films

Then there are movies in which a character is bumped on the head, gets amnesia, then all it takes is another bump for their memories to magically come back to them

This happens to Kermit the Frog in Muppets Take Manhattan. In 2004, a study done in the U.S. found that 42% of Americans believe that a second hit on the head could help someone with amnesia regain some memory

In reality this does not happen at all Don just hit people who have amnesia guys It rude and ineffective Also frogs can talk Kermit can but most frogs can Misconception number nine you can hold your breath forever

There are a lot of movies in which a character manages to hold their breath for a long time, right? There's Phantom Menace, Gravity, Titanic, and so on. Now, it is possible to hold your breath

for a really long time. For example, the current world record for holding breath underwater is 22

minutes, okay? There's no way that guy's human. He's part fish, and that's called cheating. Part

fish, man. And also, that takes, like, a lot of training and breathing pure oxygen for 30 minutes

beforehand. Unless your favorite characters have been practicing not breathing, they're probably

like the rest of us, and can only hold their breath for about 30 seconds at a time before

passing out. Misconception number 10. You get a phone call when you're arrested. In Robocop

Clarence says, just give me my effing phone call. In real life, I wouldn't recommend saying that to

a police officer. Getting a phone call after you're arrested actually isn't a clear right

Sometimes you're allowed one or more phone calls, but other times it's less clear

It all depends, like, on state laws and the situation at hand. It's a good idea, however, to ask to make a phone call, but keep the F-word out of it, okay

Also, one more piece of advice, try not to get arrested