Well, it’s the holiday movie season again. And once again, there’s a sci-fi thriller sure to attract students, The Day the Earth Stood Still. This is a remake of a 1951 movie. That plot involved an alien coming to Earth to warn of nuclear war. The remake has climate change as the demise of the planet and still includes the alien. This gives us another opportunity to help students distinguish between science and science fiction.

As educators, we read and hear many stories of how Americans are scientifically illiterate. They may ascribe supernatural explanations to natural occurrences; they may be incapable of applying fundamental science theories to a given situation as a veracity check. Many Americans are unable to make reasonable inferences and logical conclusions from given scientific findings. They may lack the ability to question how data was collected and to consider how methods matter. We complain of mass media contributing to this illiteracy by promoting sensationalized stories as entirely true. In addition, there are stories documenting the actors’ “encounters with” or belief in aliens.

However, a NYTimes.com story reports that moviemakers may be doing a better job of getting the science right. For example, this movie employed a scientist from the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute as an advisor. The same story also suggests we educators may have a friend in Hollywood, Warren Betts. A Hollywood publicist with a strong interest in science, Betts promoted a recent gathering of California Institute of Technology students, scientists and Keanu Reeves, the movie’s star, to discuss the science and science fiction in the movie. A similar event was held at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). These meetings allowed students to question the science portrayed in some scenes, and make explicit the distinctions between the science and the science fiction. But what about middle school students — how well equipped are they to discuss the differences?

How to Turn This News Event into an Inquiry-Based, Standards-Related Science Lesson

The lesson described connects to the History and Nature of Science, Science as Inquiry and Earth and Space content standards of the National Science Education Standards. Recall an earlier entry made to this blog concerning Indiana Jones movies. You can use a similar approach to this recent movie. Ask what climate change is. Don’t be surprised if students focus solely on global warming. Try to focus on the broader scientific concept of climate change for starters. Ask if they think human activities throughout history could have any impact on climate, or is climate independent of human activity? This link on Climate History from NOAA is useful.

Ask students what science fiction is. Record the characteristics they verbalize. Ask how they think climate change can be, or has been, portrayed in science-fiction movies. Can there be some truth to those portrayals? How can they know?

Here are  additional resources from the National Science Digital Library Middle School Portal related to discussions of climate change and global warming: Exploratorium: Global Climate Change; Global Climate Change: The Ross Ice Shelf; Climate Watch; Antarctica Climate and Data Graphs; and The Little Ice Age Case Study.