Abstract

The aim of this study is to draw attention to the informal education aspect of the movies shown and to determine the awareness levels about physics in movies of a small group composed of university students. That is an evaluation had been made among the films dealing explicitly with the basic content of physics, except for science fiction movies, and two films that attracted great attention in the process notation were chosen. In this study, the sample group was composed of six students who continue physics education at university and have high academic success levels. At the beginning of the sessions, the group had been informed about the aim and process of the study. The movies, which were watched by researchers and scientifically mistaken scenes had been determined beforehand, were then watched in two different sessions together with the student group. In each session, students were made to discuss the scenes dealing with physics and whether they were consistent or contrary to physics rules. The scenes in question were stopped upon the demands of students, the time interval of the scene was noted, and the discussions were recorded by a voice recorder. The researchers did not intervene in the discussions directly, but only canalised students to make the discussions deeper when needed. Through this study, it was realised that the awareness level about physics in movies of the students was quite high. This study is highly important in stressing the informal education mission of the movies and students' critical questioning of the scientific correctness in the films. This result points out that while writing a scenario, scriptwriters should take a serious academic consultancy service.