Costner as The Hood

This movie, still a good one to watch for the 50th time on late night cable, shows that movies don't have to be members of the "Science Fiction" or "Cartoon" genres to showcase science errors. Aside from the historical errors and omissions in this movie, there are two segments that exhibit GLARING examples of BAD SCIENCE.

1. Upon reaching England, at apparently what are the White Cliffs of Dover in SouthEastern England on the Strait of Dover , Robin tells Ahseem, in a somewhat Brooklyn/Cockney accent, that "We will be at my father's by nightfall." Indicates a one day's journey by foot, doesn't it? Well, a few minor Geographic details...
   • If they actually went from the Middle East , where they said they were imprisoned, to England by boat, they must have gone through the Mediteranean, around the Iberian Peninsula , and hit England from the West, North of Spain, probably at Plymouth or Dorchester , NOT the East, North of France!
   • His Father lives close to Nottingham , a town in Central England roughly 300 km from Dover in the South according to my Handy-Dandy Encarta 2000! One heckuva one-day walk, wouldn't you say?
   • On the way, they walk past, and desicrate it by walking ON , the famous Wall of Hadrian . It was built, and rebuilt many times around 200AD, by the Romans to mark their Northern British Territory and to block those nasty Scots/Celts from coming South from present-day Scotland! It's located in Northern England. It spans from Solway Firth to Tyne River just below the Southern border of Scotland . A good 600 Km to the North of the Cliffs, according to my handy-dandy Encarta 2000 ...
   • Now, put these things together...
     • How could they walk 900 km in only one day? (That's 600 to the Wall and 300 back South to Nottingham!)
     • Why would they walk all the way up NORTH, 600 Km out of their way, to pass by Hadrian's Wall on thier "way" to Nottingham? Typical men! They wouldn't stop for directions!
     • Why would they have landed on the SouthEastern shores of England from a Mediteranean trip?
     Hmmm. Sorta makes you suspect that we should teach Geography again in school.
   
   
2. About an hour into the movie, Robin (whose English accent comes and goes as often as my memory and common sense...) is talking the "Merry Men" into "seeking solice in the trees" and that "the forest can provide all we need". Well...
   
   • We immediately see a small cauldron of molten shiny metal over a camp fire. Being a "ruff" camper, I have a real problem with that!
     
     • According to Pittsburgh, it takes a little bit of work in order to get an end product of shiny metal. Metals occur in nature in the form of ores - ROCKS. Even IF, and that's a HUGE 'IF' , these bandits found a hunk of metal ore while walking nonchalantly (what's 'chalantly'?) thru the woods, they would first have to pulverize it to get it into close to powder form. THEN, they would need to drop it into the foundary to heat it to such an extent as to actually burn the rock away. What's left is the metal.
       Miraculously, these guys were able to accomplish this over a yellow flame campfire! Did you ever try to boil water over a campfire? It takes DAYS! That's why spaghetti is not a real camper's meal. A yellow flame is the coolest of them all.
     • According to my Handy-Dandy Periodic Table & Chairs , the metal with the lowest melting point - besides Mercury and Gallium and a few other weirdos - is element #49, Indium ! Ever hear of it outside a Chemistry Convention? Neither have I. It melts at 430 ^o K, about 157 ^o C. The only problem with Iridium is that it's NOT found in the earth's crust on a regular basis. Infact, it's ranked 63 ^rd on the Abundance List and it never occurs as a free-metal, only in alloys!
     • Tin is 505 ^o K, but isn't tough enough for weaponry either! Although the guys would NEVER have to worry about their swords rusting... Wizard of Oz footnote : Ever wander why the Tin Man was rusty? One of tin's primary uses is as a rust preventative coating - galvanizing! A Tin Man would NOT have rusted! They lied to me again! My life is ashambled! BooHoo BooHoo and sob....
       According to my handy-dandy Encarta 2000 , Tin is 49th on the Abundance List, BUT is found in abundance in Cornwall, England ! Close! However, Cornwall is at the SouthWestern tip of England on the Isles of Scilly Peninsula! Oops...Only 1000 Km away from Sherwood! Also, according to my Handy-Dandy Encarta 2000 ,

       In the extraction of tin, the ore is first ground and washed to remove all impurities and then roasted to oxidize the sulfides of iron and copper. After a second washing, the ore is reduced by carbon in a reverberatory furnace; the molten tin that collects on the bottom is drawn off and molded into blocks known as block tin. In this form, the tin is resmelted at low temperatures; the impurities form an insoluble mass. Tin may also be purified by electrolysis.

       Wow! Alot-O-Work for these Merry Men, don't you think?

     • So, what would be a viable choice?
       • Lead melts at 600 ^o K and is kinda common; 36th on the Abundance List. However, lead doesn't make for very good swords. They'd be a little hard to pick up in the 1 ^st place since most of us couldn't swing around 2 or 3 HUNDRED pounds of sword efficiently and they'd dent and bend like crazy even if two Conans could swing them at each other.
       • Aluminum at 933 ^o K is certainly abundant; #1 on the Ever-Popular Metals Abundance List! However, Al would make for crappy weapons. It is light but not too tough. Furthermore, take a gander at its extraction process, again according to my Handy-Dandy Encarta 2000 .

         Aluminum is the most abundant metallic constituent in the crust of the earth; only the nonmetals oxygen and silicon are more abundant. Aluminum is never found as a free metal; commonly as aluminum silicate or as a silicate of aluminum mixed with other metals such as sodium, potassium, iron, calcium, and magnesium. These silicates are not useful ores, for it is chemically difficult, and therefore an expensive process, to extract aluminum from them. Bauxite, an impure hydrated aluminum oxide, is the commercial source of aluminum and its compounds. In 1886 Charles Martin Hall in the United States and Paul L. T. Héroult in France independently and almost simultaneously discovered that alumina, or aluminum oxide, would dissolve in fused cryolite (Na3AlF6) and could then be decomposed electrolytically to a crude molten metal. A low-cost technique, the Hall-Héroult process, is still the major method used for the commercial production of aluminum, although new methods are under study. The purity of the product has been increased until a commercially pure ingot is 99.5 percent pure aluminum; it can be further refined to 99.99 percent.

       • Iron ? Chances are real good they wanted you to believe the molten metal was iron for swords and arrow heads. Problems? Yep. Mining iron is a hard time-consuming process and it's melting point is 1808 ^o K! This is about 1000 ^o K or C more than a yellow flame campfire can provide! What does my Handy-Dandy Encarta 2000 say about iron? Funny you should ask...

         The basic materials used for the manufacture of pig iron are iron ore, coke, and limestone. The coke is burned as a fuel to heat the furnace; as it burns, the coke gives off carbon monoxide, which combines with the iron oxides in the ore, reducing them to metallic iron. This is the basic chemical reaction in the blast furnace; it has the equation: Fe ₂ O ₃ + 3CO = 3CO ₂ + 2Fe. The limestone in the furnace charge is used as an additional source of carbon monoxide and as a “flux” to combine with the infusible silica present in the ore to form fusible calcium silicate. Without the limestone, iron silicate would be formed, with a resulting loss of metallic iron. Calcium silicate plus other impurities form a slag that floats on top of the molten metal at the bottom of the furnace. Ordinary pig iron as produced by blast furnaces contains iron, about 92 percent; carbon, 3 or 4 percent; silicon, 0.5 to 3 percent; manganese, 0.25 to 2.5 percent; phosphorus, 0.04 to 2 percent; and a trace of sulfur. A typical blast furnace consists of a cylindrical steel shell lined with a refractory, which is any nonmetallic substance such as firebrick. The shell is tapered at the top and at the bottom and is widest at a point about one-quarter of the distance from the bottom. The lower portion of the furnace, called the bosh, is equipped with several tubular openings or tuyeres through which the air blast is forced. Near the bottom of the bosh is a hole through which the molten pig iron flows when the furnace is tapped, and above this hole, but below the tuyeres, is another hole for draining the slag. The top of the furnace, which is about 27 m (about 90 ft) in height, contains vents for the escaping gases, and a pair of round hoppers closed with bell-shaped valves through which the charge is introduced into the furnace. The materials are brought up to the hoppers in small dump cars or skips that are hauled up an inclined external skip hoist.

         Were these guys GOOD or WHAT?
     • So, what was that shiny stuff? MERCURY ! Stunt men had a cauldron full of a coupla pounds of Mercury to simulate a molten metal. Cool, huh?Do you think any of those guys complained of Hg fumes?
   • Shortly after the 'molten' Mercury debacle, you see the Merry Men cutting twigs for arrows - ALL perfectly straight, of course - , branches for bows, and some sort of flax or hemp-like material for rope. All of a sudden, the bows have NYLON strings! Cool trick!
   • Also, note the rough hewn wood used for all the buildings. True to the nature of building structures by hand and in the woods. No problem. However, look at the sanded and painted 2x2's from Home Depot used for all the bridges! Robin was right! With a Home Depot in the woods, there is nothing they would want for...
   • Note the AMOUNT of large swords made! Great Googly Moogly! There's gotta be a ton there! Sherwood Forest must be right outside Pittsburgh!
   • Note the trajectory of Robin's arrow just before the Merry Men set out to do all their Merry-ing. This dern arrow defies gravity by traveling straight for 5 seconds! Cool!

3. Shortly after Ahseem helps Fanny (a decidedly Victorian name, by the by...) give birth because he has "...seen it many times in horses!", he tells Friar Tuck, my personal hero in this movie, he can't join him in a drink of mead because, "Alas, I may not partake. Allah forbids it." Well, my fellow beer drinkers, according to a Muslim buddy of mine, the Muslim religion forbids partaking of the "fermentation of grape". Mead is derived from fermented honey, so Ahseem could have gotten poop-faced and still been a good Muslim. Side Note: As I write this, I am partaking of Dogfish Head Brewery's Midas Touch, a honey mead derivative developed through research at the Univ of Penn after examining the chemicals left behind in King Midas' brewery... Dern good stuff!

4. Later in the show, when the "Celts" are attacking the Merry Men's forest dwelling and Little John is trying to save his wife, Fanny, and new born son from a tree house on fire, note how Robin comes to the rescue...
   There's a rope conveniently hanging right beside the adjacent tree house where Robin is. He reaches out, grabs the rope, and swings across to Fanny. Problem?
   • If the rope were hanging, it was already AT equilibrium point - that's the BOTTOM of the pendulum's swing. If you watch the sequence closely, you will see that as soon as Robin touches the rope, it "angles" itself and PULLS him across the divide! The rope is attached to a conveyor and it actually pulls him across to Fanny.
   • Now, note the rope is now conveniently hanging in front of Fanny! This dern rope has a totally different pivot point! Robin swings Fanny over to Little John at a tree house that is PERPENDICULAR to Robin's original swing path! Cool!
   • Now, after Fanny and Baby Little John are safe in Little John's massive arms, Robin swings after them toward his own safety. However, the rope is on fire and as he swings thru the bottom of the pendulum the rope snaps. What happens?
   • He and the rope fall VERTICALLY downward! BOOOOO!!!!! ! As all good PhySci students know, Uncle Newton's 1st Law of Motion applies EVEN to movie stars! His own inertia and momentum would have carried him HORIZONTALLY into a parabolic trajectory - much the same way as a marble rolling off the edge of a table!

So, what have we learned? Robin was not a Fizzisist! There are other minor problems with the movie, but, HEY!