Science in Popular Culture

Spaceships travel through time at lightspeedpiloted by human clones and talking animals. Serious injuries are healed withthe wave of a medical gizmo. The media makes it all look easy. Can scientistshope to accomplish such amazing feats in the real world or are they merelyflights of fancy? This book is a fun look at what can and can''t be achievedwith current technology in today''s laboratory experiments. This collection ofeighty-one short essays is an attempt to separate reality from dramatic licensein popular culture''s treatment of science and some of the technologies mostdeeply influenced by it. Each entry deals with a science-related object ideaperson process or concept. Each briefly summarizes the current understandingof the topic and then discusses its portrayal in popular culture and wherepossible the roots of that portrayal. Each entry concludes with a list ofrelated entries and a brief list of suggested readings specific to that topic.Fans of The Jetsons Star Trek and StarWars will learn the facts behind the fiction through entries that describethe scientific inventions and procedures on the screen and how they differfrom the reality. Van Riper shows us who innovators like Charles DarwinBenjamin Franklin and Isaac Newton really were before they were mythologized.He discusses how animals such as chimpanzees dolphins and elephants areportrayed in books and films and what we really know about animalintelligence. This book lifts the curtain on science fiction revealing how andwhere scientific laws have been discarded for the sake of a good plot.