Squashing and spaghettification in Newtonian gravitation

Abstract

Action films and sci-fi novels should be common resources in classrooms since they serve as examples and references involving physical situations. This is due to the abstract nature of many physical concepts, and the lack of references in students’ daily lives makes them more difficult to be visualized or imagined. In this work we bring a discussion of how we can resort to films and literary works in order to elucidate the concepts regarding tidal forces. To this effect, we have used the action film Total Recall (2012) to present the squashing effect and the classic of juvenile literature From Earth to the Moon (1865) to discuss the effect of spaghettification in the context of Newtonian mechanics.

Keywords

• Newtonian gravitation
• Non-inertial frames
• Tidal forces