I was watching some ‘end of the world’ movies, and quite a few of them seem to a have a shot of a massive skyscraper collapsing. But this look very slow almost as if in slow motion. Even in movies that show perspective of insects, human actions are much slower ( the pest killer scene in the ant bully)
So is this just a weird thing movies implement to make it look cool or is this an actual phenomenon and why does it occur?
Thanks
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Two factors here.
First, we humans do not see size. We see angle. A soda can at arm’s length appears larger than the moon, because the moon occupies a much smaller angle of our vision (because it is so far away).
While we can sort of guess how fast something is going based on distance, we aren’t always super good at it, and our first instinct is often wrong. For example, jet planes are quite fast, but even with how fast they are they are also very far away, so their movement only changes the angle to them a little bit at a time and they seem slow.
There is another thing involved here, though, and that is how gravity works. Ignoring for the moment the existence of air, gravity moves all things down at the same rate. A brick and a feather dropped (in a vacuum) will hit the floor at the same time.
This also means that a softball and *the titanic* dropped from the same distance above the ground will hit the ground at the same time. However, if you were to watch the titanic fall, you’d be watching it from very far away, so for the reason we discussed earlier it appears to move much slower. If you watch a softball fall, you’re probably right next to it.
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