Gravity
This scientist supposedly had his "eureka moment" about gravity when an apple fell from a tree.
Who is Isaac Newton?
This is the closest star to Earth.
What is the Sun?
In "Star Wars," this is the name of Han Solo's ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.
What is the Millennium Falcon?
This is Newton's first law of motion, often summarized as "an object in motion stays in motion."
What is the law of inertia?
In basketball, this is the path a ball follows when shot, described as a parabolic trajectory.
What is projectile motion (or an arc)?
The acceleration due to gravity on Earth's surface is approximately this value in meters per second squared.
What is 9.8 m/s²?
This planet in our solar system has the shortest year, completing an orbit in just 88 Earth days.
What is Mercury?
This 2014 Christopher Nolan film features astronauts traveling through a wormhole and experiencing extreme time dilation near a black hole.
What is Interstellar?
Force equals mass times this quantity.
What is acceleration?
Figure skaters spin faster when they pull their arms in due to conservation of this rotational quantity.
What is angular momentum?
This is the term for the point in an orbit where a satellite is closest to Earth.
What is perigee?
This space telescope, launched in 1990, has provided some of the deepest views into the universe, including the famous "Deep Field" images.
What is the Hubble Space Telescope?
In "The Martian," astronaut Mark Watney uses this element's radioactive decay to generate heat and survive on Mars.
What is plutonium?
When two objects collide and bounce off each other with no loss of kinetic energy, this type of collision has occurred.
What is an elastic collision?
In cricket or baseball, this spinning motion causes the ball to curve through the air due to pressure differences.
What is the Magnus effect?
According to Einstein's theory, gravity isn't actually a force but rather this geometric property of spacetime.
What is curvature (or warping)?
This is the approximate age of the universe in billions of years, as determined by cosmic microwave background radiation observations.
What is 13.8 billion years?
In Marvel's "Spider-Man: No Way Home," Doctor Strange's spell goes wrong partly because it violates this quantum mechanical principle, which states you cannot know both the position and momentum of a particle with perfect accuracy.
What is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle?
This quantity, the product of force and time, equals the change in momentum of an object.
What is impulse?
Olympic divers perform somersaults and twists in the air by manipulating this property, measured as mass times the square of the distance from the rotation axis.
What is moment of inertia?
This radius defines the boundary of a black hole, beyond which escape velocity exceeds the speed of light.
What is the Schwarzschild radius (or event horizon)?
These stellar remnants, composed entirely of neutrons, can spin hundreds of times per second and emit regular pulses of radiation.
What are pulsars (or neutron stars)?
In "Back to the Future," the DeLorean needs to reach this specific speed in miles per hour to activate time travel.
What is 88 mph?
In circular motion, this acceleration is always directed toward the center and equals v²/r.
What is centripetal acceleration?
In Formula 1 racing, these aerodynamic devices create downforce by utilizing Bernoulli's principle, keeping cars pressed to the track at high speeds.
What are wings (or spoilers)?