Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Education Science

Comic Book Physics 579

An anonymous reader writes "Seems many of the feats of SpiderMan, Superman and other superheroes obey the basic requirements of physics. So says a University of Minnesota physicist who uses nothing but comics to teach the subject. 'Comic books get their science right more often than one would expect ... I was able to find examples in superhero comic books of the correct descriptions of basic physical principles for a wide range of topics, including classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and even quantum physics.' Especially cool: Why Krypton *had* to explode."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Comic Book Physics

Comments Filter:
  • by cyranoVR ( 518628 ) <cyranoVRNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:25PM (#8290956) Homepage Journal
    How do the breasts of all those super-heroines manage to defy gravity so well?
  • by Zalgon 26 McGee ( 101431 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:25PM (#8290957)
    http://jpaudio.com/bullshitgas/comic_book_guy.jpg
  • Plot device (Score:5, Funny)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:26PM (#8290961) Homepage Journal
    Krypton had to explode. If it did not, there would have been no incentive for Kal'el to send his son to Earth. Without Clark landing on Earth, the whole Superman series wouldn't have made much sense.

    That said, has anyone noticed that the names of the Krypton citizens were all slightly Jewish? Jor'el, Kal'el, and the others all sound like townships in Israel.

    Maybe it's just me.
    • Re:Plot device (Score:5, Informative)

      by BitterOak ( 537666 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:27PM (#8290973)
      Krypton had to explode. If it did not, there would have been no incentive for Kal'el to send his son to Earth.

      I thought it was Jorel who sent his son to Earth. Wasn't Kalel the son's (i.e. Superman's) name?

      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:03AM (#8291193)
        You guys call yourselves Nerds? Get with the program, it's Kal-El and Jor-El. The hyphen and capital "E" are important.

        Rookies.

        PS: Did you know that the "El" family lived next door to the "Em"?
    • Re:Plot device (Score:5, Informative)

      by robindmorris ( 682328 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:30PM (#8290987)
      The "el" ending means "god" (essentially), so it's not surprising that these names end up sounding slightly Jewish.
      • Re:Plot device (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Lord Kano ( 13027 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @03:01AM (#8291989) Homepage Journal
        The "el" ending means "god" (essentially), so it's not surprising that these names end up sounding slightly Jewish.

        In Hebrew "el" as a suffix could mean "God" or "Of God", for example if we were to look at the names of angels Michael means "who is as God", Gabriel translates to "God is my strength" or possibly "my strength is God", Israel means "Striver with God", Usiel means "Strength of God", Raziel means "the secret of God".

        At one time Christians were so fond of tacking on el to the end of a word to create an angel that in 745 the church forbade the faithful to call on any angel other than Raphael, Gabriel and Michael. (the three mentioned by name in their canonical teachings)

        LK
    • Re:Plot device (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sofakingl ( 690140 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:38PM (#8291044)
      The creators of Superman were Jewish. They needed names that sounded alien for the characters, so they just used Hebrew sounding names, which at the time wouldn't be that well recognized by the general public.
      • by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @10:09AM (#8293739) Homepage Journal
        The creators of Superman were Jewish. They needed names that sounded alien for the characters, so they just used Hebrew sounding names, which at the time wouldn't be that well recognized by the general public.

        Had they been your run-of-the-mill regular good ol' Canadians, we would have had slightly different alien names.

        Kal'Eh, Jor'Eh...
    • Re:Plot device (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cujo_1111 ( 627504 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:54PM (#8291142) Homepage Journal
      Go and read this article [archive.org] about one of the creators of Superman.

    • Re:Plot device (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Lexic0n ( 107205 ) * <<moc.liamg> <ta> <norreh.ffej>> on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:07AM (#8293248) Homepage
      The creators of Superman were Jewish. "Kal-El" means something like "All that is God" in Hebrew. (Not sure on Jor-El.) Superman was created around the time of World War II, a time when the Jewish people of Europe were especially beset upon. His homeland is destroyed and his people eliminated -- sound like anything familiar? He is placed in something like a basket and floated out into space, a parallel to Moses. He is raised by a people not his own and rises to prominence in that society, also similar to Moses.

      Superman is actually a Jewish icon! He was created to give hope and encouragement to Jewish people the world over during a particularly bleak period in their history.
  • Bullet Physics (Score:5, Interesting)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:30PM (#8290986)
    A man shoots a bullet toward superman's chest, the bullet bounces off. No problem... I can buy that.

    What I can't accept is, why is there no bullet holes in the shirt? Do superheroes wear some special brand? Study that...
    • by RedFive ( 78003 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:36PM (#8291026)
      His custume is made from the material he was wrapped in on his journey from Krypton. Sheesh, even I know that :-)
      • Re:Bullet Physics (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Dylan Zimmerman ( 607218 ) <Bob_Zimmerman@NoSpaM.myrealbox.com> on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:17AM (#8291273)
        Actually, they changed that. Now, he radiates a small field that protects anything within about two millimeters of his skin. I forget when they changed it, but I do remember reading that his costume was made from the cloth from Krypton. However, this raises the question, how could it be cut and tailored? If it's immune to bullets, then one would expect it to resist being cut quite well.
        • by forgotmypassword ( 602349 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:41AM (#8291406)
          However, this raises the question, how could it be cut and tailored? If it's immune to bullets, then one would expect it to resist being cut quite well.

          Why the same way he cuts his hair!

          With his laser vision and an ideal vanity mirror that he apparently got from physics class along side the massless rope and frictionless pully.

          (I am not making this up ... well I made up where he got the mirror)
    • Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Informative)

      by platipusrc ( 595850 ) <erchambers@gmail.com> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:37PM (#8291027) Homepage
      In a Lois and Clark episode, Superman said that he had a small field of invincibility around him that protected his clothing or anything else within its range. I believe that was in response to Lois asking why his suit could be damaged in the closet, but it was never damaged when he was wearing it.
    • Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fuzzle ( 590327 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:37PM (#8291029) Homepage Journal
      <nerdvoice>Actually, this is explained in John Byrne's mini-series/relaunch The Man Of Steel, in which Ma Kent sews Clark his first costume, and they talk about how the material close to his body seems to become impervious to damage, while something like his cape, which isn't skin-tight gets shredded all the time, because it isn't as close.</nerdvoice>
      • Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Interesting)

        by endofoctober ( 660252 ) <<jk.cole> <at> <ifredsayred.com>> on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:31AM (#8291346) Homepage
        In the original Superman, didn't Ma Kent make Kal-El's first clothes out of cloth from the interior of the ship that brought the baby to Earth? I always thought the cloth itself, coming from Krypton's red sun atmosphere, would be less impervious to damage in Earth's yellow sun environment.

        The Byrne explanation was a little too "plucked out of thin air". Sometimes the best explanations are the simple ones.
        • Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Informative)

          by unitron ( 5733 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:54AM (#8291469) Homepage Journal
          Martha Kent took the kid's baby blankets, un-wove them thread by thread (since trying to cut them was a good way to break scissors, although eventually they could trim the thread with his x-Ray heat vision), and then re-wove them into his outfit, re-un-weaving and re-re-weaving as he grew from boy to man.

          At least that was the way they told it back around 1960.

          • by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @10:15AM (#8293798) Homepage Journal
            Martha Kent took the kid's baby blankets, un-wove them thread by thread (since trying to cut them was a good way to break scissors, although eventually they could trim the thread with his x-Ray heat vision), and then re-wove them into his outfit, re-un-weaving and re-re-weaving as he grew from boy to man.

            That was before women's lib. Now its all "magical force fields" and none of that opressive sewing and weaving. ;-)
    • by NewbieProgrammerMan ( 558327 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:41PM (#8291056)
      Apparently the shirt is made from the same stuff as the Hulk's pants. It cuts down on the special-effects budget for Superman movies, and eliminates the fuzzy blue dot and R-rating budgets for Hulk movies.

      In the older Superman TV shows, it was funny that he could stand there and deflect bullets, and yet he ducked when the shooter ran out of bullets and threw the gun at him.
      • by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:39AM (#8291396)
        "In the older Superman TV shows, it was funny that he could stand there and deflect bullets, and yet he ducked when the shooter ran out of bullets and threw the gun at him."

        That's because getting hit in the face with a gun hurts!

      • by kria ( 126207 ) <roleplayer DOT carrie AT gmail DOT com> on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:36AM (#8293465) Journal
        There was actually a joke about the Hulk and his purple pants. (They were always purple in the comic book for a long time.) Anyway, it was in Power Man and Iron Fist. Power Man was superstrong and while I don't think he was invulnerable, he was difficult to damage. Anyway, he favored wearing yellow silk shirts as part of his costume and they were ALWAYS getting torn up.

        One issue he was stopping by to pick up a bunch of yellow silk shirts and they clerk was handing a pile of purple pants to a Dr. Banner. :)
    • Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pranay ( 724362 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:42PM (#8291063)
      If the tension in a cloth is too great, and it is backed by a hard srface like superman muscles, it can deflect bullets without absorbing too much impact energy itself. Most bullet proof jackets are made of layers that deaccelerate the bullets by absorbing the energy, and so they get holes. Try shooting at a piece of cloth tightly wrapped around a solid titanium block, the bullet will deflect, and the cloth will remain intact.
    • Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cowscows ( 103644 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:43PM (#8291074) Journal
      I'm no expert on these sorts of things, but here's how I see it. Imagine I'm wearing a shirt that you really don't like. So you hit me in the chest with a hammer. The hammer crushes through my ribcage and creates a nice hole. My shirt gets stretched down into this new hole by the hammer, and eventually tears from the tension of it stretching. As I slowly bleed to death and whine, you notice another shirt, exactly like the one I was wearing, sitting in the street behind me. (Maybe I'm selling them and I dropped one when you hit me). So it a fit of rage, you try to destroy the shirt laying in the road. The hammer smashes the cloth against the ground before bouncing back up, but probably doesn't do any real damage to the cloth.


      Now, a bullet probably has a bit more energy in it than a hammer swung by most people, but I imagine it'd work in a similar fashion. And Superman's body seems to be made of something even stronger than asphalt.


      But I could be very wrong. and the article could explain it infact. It's too busy for me to read at the moment.

    • by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:53AM (#8291464) Journal
      Larry Biven has an excellent analysis on the difficulties of of the the physics of beingfg superman, called Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex [larryniven.org] which is both a good read, and funny as well.

      For example

      What turns on a kryptonian? What arouses Kal-El's mating urge? Did kryptonian women carry some subtle mating cue at appropriate times of the year? Whatever it is, Lois Lane probably didn't have it. We may speculate that she smells wrong, less like a kryptonian woman than like a terrestrial monkey.

      Can human breed with kryptonian? Do we even use the same genetic code? On the face of it, LL could more easily breed with an ear of corn than with Kal-El. But coincidence does happen. If the genes match...

    • by devphil ( 51341 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @01:11AM (#8291539) Homepage


      In one of the most hilarious short science essays ever written, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, Larry Niven tackles the problem of how Superman is going to reproduce.

      For example, during orgasm, one loses control of one's muscles. Superman has been known to leave fingerprints in steel and concrete accidentally. What happens to Lois while she's in his arms?

      Another example, which I'll quote directly:

      Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a Kryptonian. But with Kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El's semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet.

      Followup scenarios (for artificial insemination) assume that he's on an airless moon, to prevent the semen from exploding into vapor due to air friction at supersonic speeds. It eventually turns out artificial insemination doesn't work either.

  • by mr_luc ( 413048 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:30PM (#8290988)
    I found it very engaging. It was somewhat lightweight, but very entertaining! The U of MN is doing good with this guy.

    However, he mentioned a few superheroes that I've never heard of before -- maybe /. can help me out? Lefsa-Man, The IceFisher, SnowmoBelly . . . maybe these are DC characters?
  • by 0x1337 ( 659448 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:30PM (#8290992)
    I remember last year for the mid-year intercession at my high school> [imsa.edu], there was a whole week long class devoted to showing the FLAKEYNESS and INCORRECTNESS of comic book physics. Hell - even my Calc-Based Physics Book by Halliday and Resnick from last year had an exercise on p=mv, proving that superman wouldn't be able to just stand there and deflect bullets.
    • by Jace of Fuse! ( 72042 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:43PM (#8291076) Homepage
      One of my favorite examples of incorrectness is the classical Lois falling from atop the building and Superman, the man of steel, catching her in his arms.

      Since he's the man of steel, she would have been injured hitting his arms just as she would have had she hit the ground, or perhaps some steel structure along the way.

      "Don't worry, I've got ..." **CRACKA-SQUISH** "...your arm."
      • Superman isn't an idiot. He knows to match velocities before he catches her.

        Tim
      • by CrowScape ( 659629 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:11AM (#8291243)
        What I find funny are those instances where a superhero will pick up something like a cruise liner and nothing bad will happen to the structure considering its entire weight is resting on a surface area the size of the hero's palms. Just once I'd like to see a superhero try to save that falling jet and accidentally tear it apart.
        • by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @01:28AM (#8291604) Homepage
          Likewise, there's the paradox of heros who have super-strength but not invulnerability (e.g. spider-man). He'd have to have at least some level of increased structural cohesion (and the increased resistance to physical harm in general that accompanies it) just so his super-muscles wouldn't destroy his body when he tenses them, and so he won't be crushed by the car he's holding over his head.
          • by Garg ( 35772 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:07AM (#8292899) Homepage
            Likewise, there's the paradox of heros who have super-strength but not invulnerability (e.g. spider-man).

            Yep, this brings up one of my all-time favorite roll-your-eyes scenes, from a Superman in the 70's.

            Some doofus found a magic flute which stole Superman's powers, one at a time, and transferred them to himself. So he takes away Supe's flight and invulnerability. When Superman catches up to the doofus, he still has his super-strength, so he bursts through a brick wall.

            Now, I'm no physicist, but I know if I could somehow move my arms with enough force to smash through a brick wall, I'd end up with a pair of stumps and something resembling bloody jelly.

            Garg
    • by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @01:09AM (#8291525) Homepage
      there was a whole week long class devoted to showing the FLAKEYNESS and INCORRECTNESS of comic book physics.
      What are you talking about, dude? I know for sure that all the physics in the Fantastic Four is right -- Reed Richards knows this shit cold, man!

      Hell - even my Calc-Based Physics Book by Halliday and Resnick from last year had an exercise on p=mv, proving that superman wouldn't be able to just stand there and deflect bullets.
      But seriously (well, not so seriously), I have a copy of H&R here (I'm a physics professor). The problem says a gangster is shooting 100 bullets per minute at Superman. Each bullet has a mass of 3 grams, and their speed is 500 m/s. You're supposed to calculate the average force on his chest. The answer is 2.5 N, which isn't even enough to topple my 4-year-old daughter.

      What really rapes the laws of physics is that Superman can fly in violation of Newton's third law (or conservation of momentum, which amounts to the same thing). For instance, when he's coming in for a landing, he just kills his momentum. What's he interacting with? Objects can't make forces on themselves! Whatever mysterious method he has for creating and destroying momentum at will, presumably it also accounts for his ability to stop a jumbo jet without recoiling, etc.

      BTW, Larry Niven wrote a really funny article called "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex," about the horrific consequences if Superman was to attempt to have sex with an Earth woman. You can still find it in print -- it's been anthologized.

    • by sirsex ( 550329 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @01:20AM (#8291576)
      Well, assuming action-reaction, the bullet cannot have any more momentum then the gun does when it kicks against the shooter's shoulder. Therefore the impulse of the bullet hitting you cannot be more then the impulse of shooting same bullet
  • by BenSpinSpace ( 683543 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:31PM (#8291001)
    I've always found the physics to be amazing, and something to aspire to. I'm sure everyone has.

    Naturally, it's not possible.

    It's rather disappointing to be among the people on earth that don't have super powers, but I suppose we'll live. The fact is, us comic readers (as well as anime-watchers and game-players) constantly see heroes that seem to know when to do the right thing at the right time. No matter how stupid an anime hero can be, he (she?) always seems to be able to take on 20 enemies at once and see a punch coming a mile away. It's the same sort of thing with this comic book physics stuff. These heroes have super powers and they don't appreciate them the way we would. You know what I mean. If you were Superman, you would totally pick a fight with some big dude, and then punch him in the face. You know you would.
  • by ktakki ( 64573 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:35PM (#8291020) Homepage Journal
    Faster than a speeding packet! More powerful than a Beowulf cluster! Able to leap tall datacenters in a single click!

    Apparently, the Slashdot Effect is the kryptonite of the net.

    k.
  • Alas (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rhinobird ( 151521 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:36PM (#8291021) Homepage
    Alas, they couldn't widthstand the all powerfull Slashdot ray.

    Mirrors anyone?
    • Here you go (Score:5, Informative)

      by BlueTrin ( 683373 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:44PM (#8291087) Homepage Journal
      'Uncanny physics of comic book superheroes' Posted on Sunday, February 15 @ 16:20:59 EST by bjs

      Can you teach a physics class with only comic books to illustrate the principles? University of Minnesota physics professor James Kakalios has been doing it since 1995, when he explained the principle of conservation of momentum by calculating the force of Spider-Man's web when it snagged the superhero's girlfriend as she plummeted from a great height. "Comic books get their science right more often than one would expect," said the gregarious Kakalios. "I was able to find examples in superhero comic books of the correct descriptions of basic physical principles for a wide range of topics, including classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and even quantum physics."



      From the University of Minnesota:

      Professor to describe 'uncanny physics of comic book superheroes'


      Can you teach a physics class with only comic books to illustrate the principles? University of Minnesota physics professor James Kakalios has been doing it since 1995, when he explained the principle of conservation of momentum by calculating the force of Spider-Man's web when it snagged the superhero's girlfriend as she plummeted from a great height.

      Kakalios will describe a freshman seminar class he teaches, "Physics of Comic Books," at 11 a.m. Sunday, Feb. 15, during the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle. His talk is part of the symposium "Pop Physics: The Interface Between Hard Science and Popular Culture," one of two symposia in the Science, Entertainment and the Media category.

      "Comic books get their science right more often than one would expect," said the gregarious Kakalios. "I was able to find examples in superhero comic books of the correct descriptions of basic physical principles for a wide range of topics, including classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and even quantum physics."

      Take, for example, the strength of Superman. To leap a 30-story building in a single bound, Superman's leg muscles must produce nearly 6,000 pounds of force while jumping, Kakalios calculates. The Man of Steel was that strong because he was designed to resist Krypton's powerful gravity. But for a planet with an Earth-like surface to have so much stronger gravity, it would need neutron star material in its core--a highly unstable situation. No wonder the planet exploded. Other topics considered in Kakalios' class include:

      # Is it possible to read minds as Prof. X of the X-Men does?
      # If Spider-Man's webbing is as strong as real spider silk, could it support his weight as he swings between buildings?
      # Can the mutant master of magnetism Magneto levitate people using the iron in their blood?
      # If you could run as fast as the Flash, could you run up the side of a building or across the ocean, and how often would you need to eat?

      "Once the physical concepts such as forces and motion, conservation of energy, electricity and magnetisms, and elementary quantum mechanics are introduced to answer these and other questions, their real-world applications to automobile airbags, cell phones, nanotechnology and black hole formation are explained," said Kakalios. "The students in this class ranged from engineering to history majors, and while not all were comic book fans, they all found it an engaging and entertaining way to learn critical thinking and basic physics concepts."
  • Surprising (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:36PM (#8291023)
    This principle is also surprisingly evident in "The Simpsons":

    Martin: I would've thought that being hit by an atomic bomb would've killed him.
    Bart: Now you know better.
  • by Linux Thought Leader ( 747952 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:37PM (#8291028) Journal
    It's the biomechanics. I love to see superheroes bend the rules of biomechanics and the architecture of the human body. One of the reasons we suck at climbing and bounding around in trees is that our shoulders and wrists are not developed to do so. The freakiest thing you will ever see up close is a gibbon skeleton. I know ole Spidey was using his spider stuff, but you know he needs a sauna and a shiatsu to get the ache out of his shoulders.
    • by CrowScape ( 659629 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:23AM (#8291301)
      Actually, it's the other way around. Our shoulders and wrists are not deveolped to climb and bound around in trees because we don't. If we started from a young age, our bodies would adapt. Discovery Channel has a series "More Than Human" and in one episode they examined a girl who was frieghteningly good at climbing darn near everything. Turns out her best friend while growing up happened to be chimp... or something... anyway she of course played with it and, kids being naturally fearless, thought nothing of the heights or falling. As a result her fingers and arms adapted. Quite interesting to find out how maleable the human body can be during its development.
  • by 0xfc ( 737668 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:38PM (#8291032)
    finally i can talk about comics and not be off-topic!

    In issue 15 of walt disneys donald duck adventures, story "the mad chemist", from 1944 by carl barks.

    a letter arrived from joseph b lambert of the cali institute of tech, pointing out a curious refernece in, "the spin of states of carbenes", a tech article soon to be published by P.P. Gaspar and G.s. hammond in Carbene Chemistry.

    It seems donald's reference to CH2 was years ahead of its time: the existance of this elusive chemical intermediate had not been proven in 1944.

    http://www.uky.edu/Projects/Chemcomics/html/dd_1 5_ 2_c.html
    shows him in action on page 2!

    ah and i found the text i was trying to type out from the actual comic...

    http://www.seriesam.com/barks/detc_wdc0044-x1.ht ml

    god i love comic books.

    flaming carrot is top notch. go bob burden!

  • Anime (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SisyphusShrugged ( 728028 ) <me@@@igerard...com> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:40PM (#8291052) Homepage
    An interesting thing along the same vein for readers of Battle Angel Alita (aka Gunnm) "The Physics of Tiphares" http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Fuji/7539/phys.html [geocities.com]

    Turns out the comic book writers put more thought into it that you would have first thought!

    Although I dont know if I could still believe that superman could fly around the world and turn time backwards...

    Nerdy kid:I'm looking for a Batman for my Batmobile.
    Lee:Who about a nice "Thing" action figure?
    Nerdy kid:Uhh no,I need a Batman!
    (Lee smashes a thing figure into the Batmobile so it's legs are sticking out the floor)
    Nerdy kid:You broke my Batmobile!
    Lee:Broke,or made better!
  • by inertia187 ( 156602 ) * on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:41PM (#8291057) Homepage Journal
    Does Windows crash at the same rate in comics as it does in the real world?

    "Meanwhile... Microsoft Reports Crazy Three Month Uptimes on Windows 2003! [tinyurl.com]"

    Batman: Robin, take out your BatPDA and boot up PocketPC 2003.
    Robin: Golly gee, Batman, why is everthing BatThis and BatThat? I feel left out.
    Batman: Ok, boywonder, we'll call it the RobinPDA.
    Robin: Holy Bitrate, Batman. That sounds stupid.
    Batman: Ok, then we'll call it the BatPDA.
    Robin: Golly gee, Batman, why is everthing BatThis and BatThat? I feel left out.
    POW! BUFF! THUD!
    Batman: I've always wanted to do that.
  • by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:42PM (#8291065) Journal
    Can the mutant master of magnetism Magneto levitate people using the iron in their blood?

    The iron in our blood is mostly in the hemoglobin, specifically the heme half. Heme is an iron-based complex, in which the iron is IIRC diamagnetic.

    Therefore, I do not see how---oh, wait. I guess I'm wrong. [washington.edu] Oops. Looks like I need to review my sigma/pi bondage.
  • by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) * on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:44PM (#8291082)
    "The Science of Superheroes," [amazon.com] (Wiley Books 2002) by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg (introduction by Dean Koontz). Same duo who brought you "The Computers of Star Trek." Weinberg also wrote "Cable" for Marvel.
  • by propellor_head ( 668863 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:44PM (#8291086)
    For a different point of view, go to Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics [intuitor.com]. In particular, check out their write-up on Spider Man [intuitor.com].
  • by foidulus ( 743482 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:46PM (#8291093)
    All my physics text book had(and I'm being completely serious here) was a bunch of drawings of men looking at little girls in short skirts(the worst was when they were describing tension and had a man staring directly at the behind of a 7 year old girl when she was bent over in an elevator), shirtless boys, and monkeys. What wonderful human beings these physists must have been.
  • by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:49PM (#8291108) Homepage Journal
    I grew up on comics - I still have over 1000 of them from the '70s and '80s, stuck back in a closet, wrapped in plastic.

    What the good Professor says is not that all comic book situations are based in physical reality -- that's absurd. You don't get to teach at a Big Ten university by being a knucklehead.

    He's saying that there are instructive cases, and furthermore that those cases are often the essential ones needed to understand the underlying physics. He's saying that look, this situation that seems like over-the-top unreality is in fact pretty close to the way the universe actually works.

    I give him credit for having the guts to teach that way.
  • by rusty_razor ( 635173 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:52PM (#8291129)

    Here's an article [umn.edu] (pdf) that Kakalios wrote for the Star Tribune [startribune.com]. It discusses the simple physics behind a 1973 Spider-Man issue.

    • by rusty_razor ( 635173 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:00AM (#8291177)

      The U of M's IT magazine Inventing Tomorrow [umn.edu] interviewed Kakalios for its Spring 2002 issue. My favorite quote from the lengthy article [umn.edu]:

      One of Kakalios' favorite stories acknowledges this leap of faith. "There's a panel in which The Atom and another character have shrunk to submolecular size, and they're sitting on an electron," he recalls with a grin. "The Atom's companion says, 'We're smaller than an oxygen molecule. How are we breathing?' The Atom replies, 'I've never really figured that out.'"
  • Original Article (Score:5, Informative)

    by nrlightfoot ( 607666 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:54PM (#8291143) Homepage
  • by Planx_Constant ( 594897 ) <planx.constant@gmail.com> on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:14AM (#8291257) Homepage
    Larry Niven dealt with a lot of this an essay [larryniven.org] about why Superman is always free on Saturday night.

    It deals more with biology and psychology, but there's a lot of physics involved, too.
    • by freeweed ( 309734 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:59AM (#8291494)
      Niven's essay has always reminded me of a joke:

      Superman is flying around one night, and spies Wonder Woman sleeping through her open window. Well, Superman has Super-speed, so he figures he can be "in and out" before anyone's the wiser. So, he zips in, does his business really fast, and takes off.

      Shortly after, Wonder Woman sits up and asks "what the hell was that?"

      The Invisible Man, lying next to her, sits up and says "I don't know, but damn, does my ass ever hurt."
  • by MMaestro ( 585010 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:19AM (#8291284)
    Its only natural that comic book physics would be based off real life knowledge on physics. Simply because its easier.

    Sure you could create a program or a chart carefully detailing what the mass and content of the planet is, and then you could find out how much gravity is created, followed by the thickness/thinness of the atmosphere, followed by the way evolution has grown on the planet (such as a world where the majority of land mass is earth rather than water), etc etc.

    Or you could just reach for a high school physics book and base your comics on simple, easy to understand and apply physics. Its common to see this in everything from novels to video games. (We're playing video games that are supposed to take place in hundreds of years in the future where portable handheld rocket launchers can reload in less than 2 seconds and interstellar travel is possible, but we're still using a bread-and-butter assault rifle and grenade launcher attachment as our main weapon. Wheres the laser beam weapons? The jetpacks? The microwave guns? The robot armies? The pistol sized one shot super gun? A version of Windows which doesn't crash... ok maybe thats a little too imaginative.)

  • But... (Score:4, Funny)

    by mokiejovis ( 540519 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:29AM (#8291335)
    How about when Lois Lane falls from a building (accelerating at 9.2 m/s^2), and Superman zooms up (accelerating at, oh, let's say, -30 m/s^2 relative to Lois) and catches her, soaring off into the wild blue yonder. This leaves Lois instantaneously changing directions from +9.2 m/s^2 to -30 m/s^2, with a delta of -20.8 m/s^2.

    Wouldn't she be better off just hitting the pavement?
  • by buckhead_buddy ( 186384 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:37AM (#8291384)
    I think my difficulties at understanding my electromagnetism classes were partially because of my preconceptions caused by my understanding of light from Green Lantern comics.

    Light can be both a particle and a wave... and a big boxing glove or baseball bat depending on the controlling thoughts.

    Quantum mechanics dictates that the observer can effect the observed... but only if you have a ring on your finger, otherwise you'll just get your head beaten in by a big green boxing glove or baseball bat.

    Color can be emissive (from the light wavelength itself) or reflective (from interacting with something it hits)... but nothing will change, interact, or stop green light unless it happens to be yellow.

    The perception of color itself is really just an evolved way humans measure different wavelengths of light but there's nothing particularly special about the range of light we see... except that we can see the two most useful wavelengths: green and yellow.

    It's been a while. I don't read Green Lantern nor perform emag calculations so perhaps I've misstated something from continuity or text. C'est La Vie.
  • by xant ( 99438 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:59AM (#8291491) Homepage
    His class covers other topics such as these, that I'd really like to know the answers to:
    # Is it possible to read minds as Prof. X of the X-Men does?
    # How much does Flash have to eat?

    The second one I'd like to know because I figured out, when I was a kid, how much a regenerating troll would have to eat. (Yeah, I'm a computer geek *and* a dungeons and dragons geek.) Basically it works out that even if they're eating pure sugar, there's not enough hours in the day for them to do that.

    The Professor X one is interesting because I took a psychology class in which the professor told us in no uncertain terms why telepathy was impossible. He went into the mechanics of information processing in the brain and the differences between patterns in two different brains, and concluded based on this set of facts that even if you could detect the signal generated by someone else's brain, you wouldn't be able to parse it.

    To me this was preposterous, and I defended my position (unconvincingly, at the time) during his office hours. Signal processing is signal processing, and it doesn't matter whether the signal generated by the receiving station has any relationship with the signal generated by the sending station, as long as the receiver can process it. The human brain's ability to process the signal generated by the human mouth is probably not significantly more complex a task than the hypothetical ability to process the brain signal. You're not, after all, trying to glean the meaning of every nerve firing, just see what the person is thinking about. In a very real sense this is only a step away from what the person is saying, so why would the signal be more difficult to parse than human speech?

    In my mind the only question remaining is whether there is any signal to be processed at all. I say that because you can detect the brain signal without drilling a hole in a person's head, that it is there to be detected, it's just a matter of having sufficiently sensitive equipment to detect it. Does the brain have this? Hard to say.

    I want to know what conclusion the prof reaches.
    • by Kelmenson ( 592104 ) <kelmenson@NOspAM.yahoo.com> on Monday February 16, 2004 @03:14AM (#8292030)
      Your comment is basically the same as my attitude against Searle's Chinese room argument [utm.edu]. Quickly summarising, he says that if you had a book that gave you rules on how to convert seemingly random symbols to other seemingly random symbols, that get converted to Chinese, nobody would say the book understands Chinese. And if you get so good at following the book's rules that you don't need the book, you still don't understand Chinese, just the random symbols.


      My attitude on that was that it was a silly analogy, because if I were given the raw impulses going on in my brain I wouldn't be able to decipher it, yet clearly my brain can. Would Searl say my brain knows more than I do?


      This seems to be the same as the telepathy issue: Sure, given a printout of the impulses you couldn't figure it out, but if somehow you could map someone else's impulses onto your brain, it seems quite likely that the brain would figure out what to do.

      • by benwaggoner ( 513209 ) <ben DOT waggoner AT microsoft DOT com> on Monday February 16, 2004 @04:50AM (#8292302) Homepage
        But if you put someone else's impulses on your brain, wouldn't you become them?

        Telepathy is basically an emulation problem. Even if there was some way of extracting the neural state of someone else's brain, what would you do with that information?

        What you're suggesting is that you would have enough brain-power (fuzzy concept) to emulate someone else's mind, AND be able to interpret that emulation in some fashion. Assuming you're both human, how would that work?

        And what would a telepathy actually perceive? Someone's sub-vocalized self-commentary? An echo of how they're feeling. Drill deep, and you'll realize you really don't have much of an idea of what telepathy would actually be like.

        Heck, it's not like our own self-awareness is much beyond post-hoc justification.
  • I took this course (Score:5, Informative)

    by aarku ( 151823 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @01:41AM (#8291656) Journal
    This is what is called a "Freshman Seminar" which is a 2-3 credit class (this one was 2) just to get you comfortable with talking to professors and crap. It's not supposed to be all that serious. I also took "Science of Space Travel", and got an easy A but learned quite a bit. Both were fine classes, U of M is a good school.
  • by atlasheavy ( 169115 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @01:57AM (#8291709) Homepage
    having suffered through Physics for Engineers 1 and 2 at the U of Minnesota three years ago, I only wish I had been able to take this class; that would've made the whole experience just a wee bit more enjoyable. oh well. At least I showed up often enough to my classes to still get my computer science degree...
  • by David_Shultz ( 750615 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @03:00AM (#8291985)
    Pieces of kryptonite are found scattered about the planet. We are told these are shards from the destruction of Krypton. If we assume that the shards were evenly distributed in all directions, we can determine the minimum size the planet Krypton must have been.

    First off we need the distance. Let's assume Krypton circled the nearest star to our own (we are looking for the minimum size of Krypton). Proxima Centauri (or Alpha Centauri C) is only 4.22 light-years away. (393 927 289 812km)

    Imagine a sphere whose radius extends from where the planet Krypton used to be, to the earth. The surface area of this sphere represents the 3-d area across which the shards of kryptonite were distributed. This sphere has a surface area of 4.87508x10^23km(standard calculation).

    The earths radius represents a fraction of this total surface area. The earths radius is 6.3781 x 10^3km. multiply by pi to get the area (the area is 2-d -ie not squared- because the surface of a sphere is 2-d). The next step is comparing this 2-d surface area to the surface area of the imaginary sphere we got above. The result: the earth represents a TINY 4.110086 x 10^-18% of the surface area of our Krypton-explosion sphere. If we multiply the amount of kryptonite on earth by the inverse of this number, we get the amount of Krypton that is scattered around the entire surface area of the sphere.

    And how much kryptonite is on the Earth? damned if I know, so let's just estimate based on what we know of the series. It's been made into various weapons and devices, been sold over the blackmarket, been hidden in secret storage areas, been acquired by every evil organization or villian ever, so presumably the amount on Earth is quite high. BUT, we are calculating for a minimum size of Krypton, so we'll estimate low. 10kg seems more than fair. Now, 2/3 the Earths surface is water, and i haven't heard of any kryptonite being recovered from undersea explorations, so that 10kg found on earth was the 1/3rd that hit the land. So, 30kg hit the Earth. Also consider burning up on reentry. I don't know of kryptonite being indestructible, and it has been made into a liquid at least once in Superman history. Its Probable that at least 90% was burned up in reentry. (If someone with more precise figures and re-do calcs t'would be appreciated). so, the 30kg that hit the earth represents only 10% of the 300kg that hit the atmosphere.

    multiply this by the inverse of this by the inverse of the fraction that represents the surface of our Krypton-explosion sphere over our earths surface area sphere. The result: The planet Krypton weighed an absolute minimum of 7.299x10^19kg. By comparison, our sun weighs 2x10^30kg.

    • by Pentagram ( 40862 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:55AM (#8292473) Homepage
      The earths radius represents a fraction of this total surface area. The earths radius is 6.3781 x 10^3km. multiply by pi to get the area (the area is 2-d -ie not squared- because the surface of a sphere is 2-d). The next step is comparing this 2-d surface area to the surface area of the imaginary sphere we got above. The result: the earth represents a TINY 4.110086 x 10^-18% of the surface area of our Krypton-explosion sphere. If we multiply the amount of kryptonite on earth by the inverse of this number, we get the amount of Krypton that is scattered around the entire surface area of the sphere.

      What about the effect of the Earth's gravity?
  • by PhotoGuy ( 189467 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @06:42AM (#8292600) Homepage
    In movies, the producers can play fast and loose with physics, because they have the benefit of motion and sound, to make things seem more plausible (if only slighly plausible, to someone who understands basic physics logically).

    In comic books, being still frames with no sound, any action, motion, sound, can be implied, but it's really up to our imaginations to create the vivid scene that is real to life; and we do that with the feel for real world physics that we experience in real life. I would guess that this has something to do with comic books tending to be a bit more realistic; so they can leverage our own experience with the physics of the world, for a more realistic and vivid experience.

  • by RayBender ( 525745 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @08:59AM (#8293186) Homepage
    My favorite is the "Mobius Wall"; our hero looks around this wall and sees a tail. He puts a stick of dynamite under it, then too late realizes it's his own... :) A great demonstration of non-Euclidean geometry.

    The rest of the Wyle E. Coyote ones are just as good. 'Though I don't think he handles momentum in a physically accurate way, he does have an engineers' appreciation for Murphy and His Laws...

  • by tgibbs ( 83782 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @10:44AM (#8294075)
    ...is the failure to understand weight, gravity, and balance. Very often, one sees a "superstrong" character lifting, say a truck, by grabbing it at one end and picking it up. But no matter how strong you are, if you are going to lift something, the combined center of gravity of the object plus you has to be be between your legs, or you will fall over. So you might be strong enough to carry a truck if you were underneath it, but no matter how strong you were, you couldn't pick it up from one end unless you were considerably heavier than the truck itself. Superman, by the way, is presumably an exception to this, since he is apparently immune to gravity--so he could probably lift a big weight from one end by "flying downward". A classic older cover drawing of Superman, back when he couldn't fly, but only "leap tall buildings," showed him lifting a car "realistically"--over his head like a weight lifter.

    A related error is an unrealistic notion of the strength of materials. You can't pick a car up by the bumper; it will just break off.
  • wrap-up (Score:4, Interesting)

    by falsification ( 644190 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @07:11PM (#8299579) Journal
    The thread is wrapping up. Unfortunately, a whole bunch of posters found it necessary to make off-topic comments. If you want to see lots of discussions of Manga, animated television shows, movies, and other boring stuff, read the whole thread.

    The topic is supposed to be comic books and physics. Comic books are a much-maligned, yet fascinating form of art. The conjunction of art and science should have made for a fascinating thread, but alas, it didn't.

    Classic physics nonsense from the comic books includes:

    • Superman flies faster than a speeding bullet but does not make a sonic boom.
    • Iron Man flies thanks to his boot jets, but does not have incredibly strong stomach muscles.
    • Lots of problems where the energy for Superman style mentally guided flight, force fields, and the like. It's not enough to say "manipulation of gravitons." What is the mechanism for manipulating gravitons? Where does the energy come from to power the mechanism? How exactly does the superhero control the mechanism?
    • Many powers come from "another dimension." I'd like to visit one of those. Oh. I guess that's impossible. Because they don't exist.
    • Extra-dimensional travel seems ridiculous. There are no "parallel Earths."
    • Time travel, like the second Flash (Barry Gordon). Teleportation, like Nightcrawler. Bleargh. Nuff said.
    • How does Batman stay young after all those decades of crimefighting?
    • Shrinking or growing, like Hank Pym. Where does the mass go?
    • The whole telepathic communication with other beings, whether with humans or aniamls, makes no sense. Aquaman is silly. Another problem is the "danger sense" of Spider-Man.
    • Any really strong character needs to have body armor or tough skin, or he is going to get seriously hurt. Take Sub-Mariner. He can punch holes in steel, but he cuts easily. He should have bled to death by now.
    • Biological processes are never really explained. Just how does Wolverine's "fast healing" work? They never explain.
    The best superhero characters are those that are most plausible. These include Batman, Iron Man, and the relatively low powered characters. It shouldn't be surprising that these are the characters with the most developed and most interesting back stories.

    A highly powered character like Superman can be made into a great character by weaving in a tragic flaw or two. Superman not only has to watch out for Kryptonite, he never has a satisfying love life that can last. (Yeah, the physics of him having sex. Har har.) Kal-El (Superman) is a brokenhearted man. He is the last of his race. He wants to help mankind, and will do whatever he can with his superpowers to be of service. But in the end, he is lonely, isolated. In some ways Kal-El is like a religious figure.

    The other route is to make a character based on principles that are far beyond what modern physics can suggest. The prototype is Silver Surfer. While Silver Surfer is a great character, the reader can never really relate to a totally alien being like him.

    The best route is a superhero without superpowers, or very few superpowers. Gadgets, martial arts, and wits fill the gaps. That's how to make a great superhero character.

"Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless carci into dogfood..." -- Badger comics

Working...