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the core 2003 - What is the meaning of "The whole bigger"?


Dr Braz and Josh Keyes tried an experiment on computer to see wheather blowing nuke weapon will cause Earth's core to start spin again but it didn't create good results. So Dr Conrad told his idea:



Dr Conrad: You drop a large stone into a pond, you get a big splash, and then that's it, it's over. But drop a smaller stone, wait until the ripples weaken and drop another and another, and another, and fluid dynamics 101. The ripples reinforce each other in geometric progression.


Dr Braz: The whole bigger than the sum of the parts. Then we'll have five 200 megaton explosions...


Dr Conrad: Instead of one big bang.




Answer





The whole is better than the sum of it's parts



Is a well known idiom


An example would be: An orchestra sounds better than any of the individual musicians playing the piece by themselves


In the case of the movie, the cumulative effect of multiple bombs exploding in a carefully times sequence gives a better effect that one single huge bomb.


Replacing "better" with "bigger" just gives more context to the plot point here.


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