One of my favourite books is Bad Astronomy by Phil Plait. Today I was reminded by news on the radio of more bad physics, and recall 3 instances noticed in recent times... The first 2 concern the way physical phenomena are portrayed in films; the last is on a typical bad trope often repeated in reporting on Catastrophic Climate Change (C.C.C.). Here goes:

1. Currently the biggest evacuation of people since World War II is taking place in south-western Germany, in and near Frankfurt (two sites!). Old unexploded bombs from that war were found, and need to be disabled by state professionals. Thousands (!) of people have been asked to leave their homes for a good many hours (they can return by 8 p.m. if all goes well), including a hospital and all its patients, and a radio station. -- Now, the question why so many is answered by the large blast radius of such a big bomb: One-and-a-half km's (roughly one mile). Inner bodily injury is still possible near the full extent of the radius, and it's this that reminded me of typical "escapes" from big explosions in Hollywood, like I saw last night when watching that hours-long-ad-disguised-as-a-movie BATTLESHIP. Guys diving/boating away from huge explosions easily just a few 100 metres away, and never having any problems due to the expanding spherical pressure wave. If at least one could see their ears bleeding afterwards...

2. Another typical peeve - actually mentioned in Plait's book as #4 in the "B.A. goes Hollywood" chapter - in that movie is the visible beam of light/whatever being shot from a satellite into outer space. Not only is such a beam not visible if it's a laser (or other form of plain light), it would take at least the no. of years indicated by the no. of light years the target is distant from the Earth for a one-way trip. Regarding its visibility, it could of course be a stream of very hot plasma - i.e. actual matter - issuing from the satellite... but then it would take an order of magnitude longer to get to the target planet!

3. Not many months ago, the current climate rollercoaster (yes, I of course accept that the world climate is going through a tumultous phase, but C.C.C. predicts permanent change for centuries!) made a large piece of ice shelf break off in the Antarctic. Immediately we again had many newspaper & other reports warning of rising sea levels, as if the current event had anything to do with that. That is scare hype! As the name indicates, a "shelf" is a horizontal extension of thick ice already floating in sea water. Ice suspended in water does not raise the water level as it melts - it has already displaced some water volume as it is inserted or formed in/on the water; i.e. current levels are already "raised". Should the rollercoaster abate, the shelf will probably reform in its original size over years.