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."
A Big Mystery (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A Big Mystery (Score:5, Funny)
and, to paraphrase Calvin, "apparently her superpower is being able to fit into that skin-tight suit".
Re:A Big Mystery (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds a bit like my super power (Score:5, Funny)
As spys/superheros/supervillains always seem to have attractive women as their offsiders I'd be the perfect person to infiltrate their lair.
Re:Sounds a bit like my super power (Score:5, Funny)
Strange! I'm attractive to invisible women.
Re:A Big Mystery (Score:5, Informative)
and, to paraphrase Calvin, "apparently her superpower is being able to fit into that skin-tight suit".
That was Hobbes. To which Calvin replied, "Nah, they can all do that."
Re:A Big Mystery (Score:5, Funny)
Worst. Slashdot Article. Ever. (Score:3, Funny)
More links and info (Score:5, Informative)
Also seen on Slashdot here in May 2002 [slashdot.org], so it's a repeat, but from a while ago.
Plot device (Score:5, Funny)
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)
I thought it was Jorel who sent his son to Earth. Wasn't Kalel the son's (i.e. Superman's) name?
Re:Plot device (Score:5, Funny)
Rookies.
PS: Did you know that the "El" family lived next door to the "Em"?
Re:Plot device (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Plot device (Score:5, Interesting)
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, Informative)
Some have said the vowels came from the Greek "Adonai" to give you, roughly, Yahowah. That is convenient but not 100% accurate. Other names like Joshua (Yehoshua) and many others contain the divine name have and preserved the proper vowels through common use. The pronunciation was almost certainly Yehowah in Hebrew -- and in English it *is* "Jehovah" (no need to mix languages in a sentence).
How's THAT for offtopic? I never expected to discuss Hebrew phonetics in an article about comic book physics!
Re:Plot device (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Plot device (Score:5, Funny)
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)
Re:Plot device (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:What was the explosion called? (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, I'm pretty sure it was "Bloody'el."
Bullet Physics (Score:5, Interesting)
What I can't accept is, why is there no bullet holes in the shirt? Do superheroes wear some special brand? Study that...
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Informative)
He's a little wrong.
Kevlar vests are designed to fail. That's why there are multiple layers of Kevlar. Each layer slows the bullet as it fails. The plan is that before the bullet penetrates your flesh, it gives all of its energy to making the Kevlar fail.
I have a Kevlar vest and I stabbed the rear panel with a survival knife. No penetration at all, but I have read of police who were shot with broadhead hunting arrows and the vests were only useful to them as big band-aids.
You're Kevlar gloves aren't uncuttable, they just don't cust as easily as your skin, hopefully you'll get your hand out of the way before the Kevlar in the glove fails.
LK
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
At least that was the way they told it back around 1960.
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Funny)
That was before women's lib. Now its all "magical force fields" and none of that opressive sewing and weaving.
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Funny)
That's because getting hit in the face with a gun hurts!
ducking the gun (Score:5, Funny)
Superman would duck the thrown gun because just standing there like a doofus while a pistol bounces off your forehead looks stupid.
Even superheros who pretend to be mild mannered reporters have their pride, ya know?
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Funny)
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)
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Informative)
#1 - any deflection in the bullet path ("ricochet") would have to at some point, engage the material as its path curved..
#2 - the material itself would be mashed (and probably torn) just by the sheer collision of a fast bullet and the wall.
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:4, Informative)
It would shatter wouldn't it? It's extremely brittle unless in an alloy.
Any metallurgists out there? Edu-ma-cate us!
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:5, Funny)
Man of Steel Woman of Kleenex (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Forget bullets -- physics of superhero sex (Score:5, Funny)
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:
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.
Re:Bullet Physics (Score:4, Insightful)
I took this guy's class. (Score:5, Interesting)
However, he mentioned a few superheroes that I've never heard of before -- maybe
Re:I took this guy's class. (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry - it's late.
Re:I took this guy's class. (Score:5, Funny)
The link between The Combustible and FartBoy was pretty neat, when explaining the hindenberg...
I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher. (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher. (Score:5, Funny)
Tim
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is the delta-V that counts though, hitting the ground is more or less instant. A catch, even by a man moving upwards can be executed to slow that down. (Ie start the catch above your head, and slowly decelerate by moving your arms down). Mind there is still a large delta-V at any given instant, but not nearly as large.
It is left as an exercise to the reader to determin if spreading out the change in this way is enough to save a life.
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher. (Score:5, Insightful)
Favorite 'bad physics' moment (Score:4, Funny)
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
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher. (Score:5, Funny)
I think that's not a valid comparison. Inside the matrix, Neo does NOT have super powers in the same sense that superman etc. have. Neo's power is basically that he can manipulate "reality". If he can rewrite one law of physics, why should momentum be an issue? Even Trinity (and Morpheus etc.) could rewrite physics to a lesser extent to enable them to jump huge distances and so on.
To be honest, the only real question is why he decided to fly rather than say, teleport. Another option might be turning the floor to sponge like in the training leap. The only answers I can come up with are:
"It generates more tension in the film."
"Neo is an idiot and never considered the idea."
As an aside, I've always wondered why he bothered with martial arts once he had discovered his powers. Simple tactics like ramming agents at supersonic speeds would be much more effective. He may have had no choice against agent Smith (something of a special case), but normal agents shouldn't even have made him slow down.
I think this all goes to prove that you should never let a gamer near dodgy physics. Or dodgy backgrounds. We'll rapidly find a way to exploit the holes.
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I though otherwise, so did my physics teacher. (Score:4, Insightful)
Impressive role models (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Slashdotted. (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently, the Slashdot Effect is the kryptonite of the net.
k.
Alas (Score:4, Funny)
Mirrors anyone?
Here you go (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Martin: I would've thought that being hit by an atomic bomb would've killed him.
Bart: Now you know better.
It's not the physics they bend... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's not the physics they bend... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's not the physics they bend... (Score:4, Informative)
The story about the chimp is true, check the bio, in the above link.
donald duck adventures and the mad chemist (Score:5, Interesting)
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_
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.h
god i love comic books.
flaming carrot is top notch. go bob burden!
Anime (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
But the question is... (Score:5, Funny)
"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.Batman: I've always wanted to do that.
One of the questions in the article (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:One of the questions in the article (Score:5, Interesting)
Here [sci.kun.nl] is a picture of a frog levitating in a 16 Tesla (160,000 Gauss) magnet. According to this [spellmaker.com] page, humans have a similar diamagnetic susceptibility to frogs.
Thus, if you could apply 16 Tesla or more over the volume of a human, he/she will levitate.
Cheers,
Johann
For Further Reference: (Score:5, Informative)
Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics (Score:5, Informative)
I wish I had that physics text (Score:5, Funny)
Suspension of disbelief considered harmful (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Spider-Man and the death of Gwen Stacy (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Additional article, similar content (Score:5, Interesting)
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]:
Original Article (Score:5, Informative)
"Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" (Score:5, Informative)
It deals more with biology and psychology, but there's a lot of physics involved, too.
Re:"Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" (Score:5, Funny)
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."
Human imagination is limited by human knowledge (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
Wouldn't she be better off just hitting the pavement?
Green Lantern Light (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Here's a couple I really want to know (Score:5, Interesting)
# 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.
Re:Here's a couple I really want to know (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Telepathy or brain wiping? (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
physics at the U of MN (Score:4, Interesting)
minimum mass of Krypton! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:minimum mass of Krypton! (Score:4, Insightful)
What about the effect of the Earth's gravity?
Because it requires our past experiences... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Wyle E. Coyote! (Score:4, Funny)
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...
The most common comic physics error... (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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.
Re:Hulk and Xmen2 (Score:5, Funny)
Because I know I can.
Re:Hulk and Xmen2 (Score:5, Insightful)
But (assuming you buy into her power of telekinesis in the first place) you could cause the air to act as a natural lens or mirror, causing the beam to be distorted and deflected...
Re:Hulk and Xmen2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Pushing something with your brain completely violates Newton's 3rd law. You would have to explain where the equal and opposite force is.
If Yoda is holding a spaceship up in the air, then there is a mighty big weight pushing down somewhere
Oh and don't think that Magneto's E&M powers can skirt around this. E&M conserves energy-momentum too. You can't do work from nothing.
Re:Hulk and Xmen2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Comic Book Physics (Score:5, Funny)
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-- this is not a
Some simple answers... (Score:4, Interesting)
Kryptonite affected all people on Krypton so they were, in a sense, just like earthlings. They did not have super powers because the kryptonite kept them normal.
Ma Kent claimed him as her child, and since they lived in the country, were never questioned about it. So all records would be based on good faith
He didn't have an instruction manual in the pod. No one on Krypton had any super powers because of the kryptonite, so he doesn't know what he can do and sometimes discovers latent powers.
He can fly, remember? He just cancels out all but about 190-200lbs.
The answer to all the other questions are this: He's Superman
Re:Does this mean (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does this mean (Score:4, Funny)
Tom and Clark were standing on the roof of their building drinking a few beers on their break and Clark said, "Hey Tom, did you know that if you jump off this building, after you get down so far, a draft will pull you back inside the building on the third floor?"
"Get outta here," said Clark.
"No I'm serious, watch me."
Clark hopped off the building and sure enough, he was taken in by the draft at the third floor window. He took the elevator back to the top and Tom and a security guard that arrived were standing there, Tom in awe.
"I can't believe it." Said Tom.
"I know you should try it Tom."
So Tom hopped off and plunged into the ground.
"Superman, you're a real asshole when you're drunk." said the security guard.