First offering in Winter 2025. Second offering in Fall 2025.

Welcome to Science in the Movies! This course is designed to help non-science majors and others fulfill a general education requirement while learning about Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences through the power of film. We will watch and analyze movies to describe natural phenomena and to review how scientists figure things out and solve problems. In particular, we will describe the role of scientists in mitigating natural disasters, solving environmental problems, and enabling space exploration. The cinematic treatment of these science topics will provide opportunities to distinguish between facts and exaggerations, develop information literacy, and sharpen critical thinking skills.

Important: This course is not a film theory course nor a film critique course. It is a science course. We use movie scenes sparingly to illustrate key science concepts.

Winter 2025 list of topics and movies:

• Gravity: Gravity (2013)
• Electromagnetism: The Dish (2000)
• Planetary interiors: The Core (2003)
• Planetary surfaces: The Martian (2015)
• Planetary atmospheres: The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
• Earthquakes: San Andreas (2015)
• Volcanism: Dante's Peak (1997)
• Impact hazard: Deep Impact (1998)
• Relativity: Interstellar (2014)
• Life in the universe: Contact (1997)

Fall 2025 list of topics and movies:

• Gravity: Gravity (2013)
• Electromagnetism: TBD
• Relativity: Interstellar (2014)
• Planetary interiors: The Core (2003)
• Planetary surfaces: Apollo 11 (2019)
• Planetary atmospheres: The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
• Earthquakes: San Andreas (2015)
• Impact hazard: Deep Impact (1998)
• Life on Earth: Gattaca (1997)
• Life in the universe: Contact (1997)

Instructional format: Lectures (2.5 hours/week) are supplemented with film clips, in-class demonstrations, active learning exercises, and weekly discussion sections (1 hour/week).

Grading: In-class quizzes about each movie (5%), Course evaluation (5%), Discussion section participation (20%), Homework (20%), Midterm exam (20%), Final exam (30%).

Syllabus: Here is a notional syllabus for Winter 2025.

Course evaluations: Based on 272 responses in Winter 2025 and a scale of 1 (very low) to 9 (very high), the overall rating of the instructor is 8.53 (mean) and 9 (median) and the overall rating of the course is 8.15 (mean) and 9 (median). Here is the complete evaluation report.