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While the calculation works just as planned, Watney makes an explosive mistake. Spoiler Alert! Here's the complicated math problems Mark Watney has to solve, to survive in "The Martian." (Image credit: by Karl Tate, Infographics Artist) (Yes, we now know there's ice and even liquid water on present-day Mars - that doesn't mean they're located where he happened to land.) For that, he uses some chemistry: He combines a precise ratio of hydrogen, drawn from rocket fuel, and oxygen to create the necessary water.

Watney's potato exploits hit a snag early on: He will need to create enough water to nurture the growing plants in the bone-dry Martian soil. Warning: This discussion contains mild plot-based spoilers. The leap of creativity only happens when it's earned by quick thinking and a careful reckoning of the circumstances.Ī few of the most interesting math moments in "The Martian" are below. You count, you start thinking, you do the math, and you pull together a solution out of what you have. It feels like real exploration should feel, because if you're stuck, you don't pull out a piece of supertech you've had all along to survive. "The Martian" is a good movie precisely because it stops to do the math. Without spoiling the events of the movie, there are many times when these calculations, or "doing the math" (and often that specific phrase), form a key part of a scene. Then he gets to work planting, growing and counting again. Luckily, some raw potatoes in the supplies, intended for the crew's Thanksgiving, can act as a stopgap measure.

(Some viewers' quarrel with the movie is that it skips straight to that more exciting aspect of particular key solutions.)Īfter finding out exactly how much food he lacks, Watney realizes that he will have to create his own. Those leaps are often more interesting to storytellers, but you still need to do the calculations to make them work. I said before that exploration is all about math, but there's actually another element: You need to know what math to do, and that often requires creative leaps.