The Walking Dead Shuffles Into Science Education With Bolts, Brains, and a Physics Quiz

In what has to be a win for science communication, AMC—the cable network behind the wildly successful zombie comic adaptation The Walking Dead—has decided to partner with an online instruction company and the University of California-Irvine to create a zombie-themed interdisciplinary course. Entitled Society, Science, Survival: Lessons from AMC’s The Walking Dead,the free online course will run for eight weeks alongside the show and use the premise of a zombie apocalypse to teach students about everything from viral infections to the nutritional value of survival foods (read: should I eat a squirrel?). The collaboration has also decided to include a physics module in the course, focusing mainly on the gruesome interactions between projectiles and brains. For any science and pop culture geek, it seems like too good an opportunity to pass up if you have the time. Personally, I felt compelled to try the physics portion of the zombie-themed course before the new season of the show airs this Sunday night. I did. Thanks to an email exchange with Professor Michael Dennin, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California-Irvine, and one of the professors for the AMC course, I got my hands on one of the physics questions you could expect. Yes, it involves crossbow bolts and zombie brains. So, time to enrich your brrrraaaaaaiiiiinnnnnssss with a zombie pop-quiz! Try your best; I’ll put the answer to the first question at the bottom of the post.