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Comic Book Physics
hij writes "NANDO net has an article about a physics professor at the University of Minnesota is offering a class in
Comic Book Physics. He looks into such things as the amount of calories that the Flash burns and the tension in spider-mans web."
Guns with infinite bullets. Oh, we are not talking about Hollywood movies, my bad.
i was always curious about what those tights would do to your crotch after a good fight with a super villian.
also, did they figure out what supermans cape does? does it provide lift somehow?
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
CUBICLE MAN: Able to ignore work at lightspeed
everyone knows that people learn better when they're actually interested in the material.
I have two responses to this. 1) good job trying to make education fun, and interesting. 2) I hope he branches out to less traditional comic characters too.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
Actually invited a colleague's physics class
into my lab for them to pick a hero and do a report on the different abilities. The kids(high-school) loved it!
Now you know what your kids are being taught now days!
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
how fast does superman fly when he is having kryptonite thrown at him? :P
But if you assume he can actually run at the speed of light, you can derive almost everything, even nonphysical things. In the same way, if you start by assuming that 1==2 then you can basically prove anything (even wrong things) mathematically.
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
and so: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/09/051722 8&mode=thread
and so: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/12/21/092121 2&mode=thread
Ok, not exactly, but it all feels the same, you know?
All I know is that *I* burn lots of calories yelling at my browser trying loading yet another Flash page.
;)
Flash: Giving Electronica Music a Bad Name Since 1996.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
A movie about my daily life. Here's a review.
Sweetness...
These remind me of the 'There can't possibly be a Santa Clause because' document. Boils down to the fact that Santa, if he really did visit all the little good, Christian boys and girls would go through reindeer at an alarming rate. He'd lose them to explosions caused by atmospheric friction energy greater than a reentry burn.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Well, I'm no scientist but it seems to me that if he went swinging around like that, it would litteraly rip his arm off. Does he have an exoskeleton I don't know about?
The flash does burn alot of callories, but unfortunatly, he still eats way more than he needs. This is why he hasn't had a movie (at least not lately), he is now over 600 lbs and can only run at abou 100mph.
Let's see, what other comic books are out there? Superman is just too easy to do (that or I can't think of any right now).
The incredible hulk is actually a very buff man who simply put on some halloween makeup once that caused a skin rash. Unfortunatly, while the makeup washed off, his skin stayed green. I guess this doesn't have to do with physics, does it?
Aquaman prevents his head from imploding when he dives deep because it is, in fact, filled with water and not a brain, as was previously thought. This allows him to equalize the pressure because he has holes in his ear drums. This explains why he spends his time with dolphins and tuna.
Wolverine's system survived the adamantium bonding because he takes lots of Citrical (R), a vitamin that helps prevent ostioperosis and death while bonding rare metals to your skeleton. To do this though, he had to take 2 bottles per day. This added up to so much money that he was forced to join a traveling, crime-fighting circus. They later dropped the circus part and just became the X-Men.
Of course, the last thing that I know is that the Silver Surfer is not actually silver but a rare form of mercury, which is why he is not only neutraly boyant in water, air, and anything else, but explains why anyone who touches him goes insane. I realize that this isn't in the comic books, but if they put that in, would you buy them?
OK, so I got off topic. Yes I made it all up. Sure I've never read a comic book for any of the above heros. Yes, most of it doesn't have to do with physics. Sure you can mod me down. But I got a long post in as one of the first, doesn't that deserve me a +1 "Good Try" mod? Admit it, this was funny. It was also not meant to offend any 300 piple-faced fanboys who might come to my house and trivia me to death about the time when they drew Batman's head 0.01% too small for his body. Those are my nighmares you know. I did mean the first part seriously, but then I got off topic. Oh well.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
"Of course," said Batman. "The acid-neutralizing pills in my utility belt rendered the acid harmless before it was able to burn us."
I don't remember the specific numbers of the question, but it was basically: if there were n gallons of 5 molar HCl in the vat and the pills were NaOH, how much must the pills have weighed? How much energy was released in the reaction, and are Batman and Robin likely to have survived?
Batman would have needed something like two tons of NaOH in his belt, and the resulting explosion would have evaporated all the water and fried the dynamic duo to a crisp.
of the very relevant(->sarcasm) questions raised in Mallrats..
:) and asks:
Like when brodie meets stan lee(played by stan, kinda cool
Do you think Mr. Fantastic can stretch his dinky also? And do you think The Thing is hard all over? I mean really all over.
or even..
T.S.: But they're engaged.
Brodie: Doesn't matter, can't happen.
T.S.: Why not? It's bound to come up.
Brodie: It's impossible, Lois could never have Superman's baby. Do you think her fallopian tubes could handle the sperm? I gurantee you he blows a load like a shotgun right through her back. What about her womb? Do you think it's strong enough to carry her child?
T.S.:Sure, why not?
Brodie: He's an alien, for christ sake. His Kyrptonian biological makeup is enhanced by earth's yellow sun. If Lois gets a tan the kid could kick right through her stomach. Only someone like Wonder Woman has a strong enough uterus to carry his kid. The only way he could bang regular chicks is with a kryptonite condom. That would kill him!
is brodie right or is he jumping to conclusions? I really NEED to take this class!
I'd like to know about the theory behind those anit-grav bras women in comics seems to be wearing.
I do understand that they are doing this basically to make some of these problems more interesting (I could understand it more if this was an elementary or high school class though....why would people taking college level physics courses need comic book subject matter as a motivation?) but it really does kind of miss the point. I.e. with that whole Flash question, it implies that Flash uses his own energy. My understanding of the Flash is that he accesses some mystical Speed Force that actually powers him, and it has nothing to do with burning any energy directly.
That I'm going to go to college to learn about American History and learn a trade when I could learn about comic books!
Where's my transfer forms?
Prof Kakalios is a great guy. He always brought us doughnuts for our 8AM discussion section. Come to think of it, that was the only 8AM class I've ever consistently gone to...
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
as opposed, for instance, to Jon Katz who
uses comics to push his "post 9/11" agenda
and SW2 disappointment and discuss bullshit myths of nerds rejection (never saw that in Homer).
I never see the Fab 4 discussed ; Mr Stretch or the Invisible look indeed far-fetched,
but about the torch, one can indeed fly with jetpacks (as seen in Thunderball or Duke Nukem), and for the Thing, Mike Tyson pops to mind.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
I always enjoy seeing creative teaching methods. This sounds like a fun class. And while I've never had a "comic book class", I've seen superhero-type questions ("If Superman has X-Ray vision, what's the smallest object he can see?"), and all physics students like to play with the crazy "what if?" questions ("If centripetal force is constant for constant acceleration, what limits how fast I can drive in a circle?").
It doesn't mention in the article, but I presume they tackle realistic problems along with their superheroic counterparts. That's necessary for developing intuition, and can help evaluate the realism or plausibility of the "Flash" cases.
I also think doing rigorous work on unusual cases helps develop abstract thinking and problem solving skills. And those are very important when later dealing with problems (like at work), where the answer isn't in the back of the book.
ShoutingMan.com
This reminds me of the two limited series that both Marvel and DC put out, called "Marvel Universe" & "Who's Who" respectively -- remember them? I used to love those -- they were alphabetically organized compendiums of every character, ship, and base in both of the comic book universes.
The best part was when they used clever but blatant pseudo-science to try to explain away the smaller inconsistencies of the characters (i.e. Q: "How does Superman shave -- his beard must be super strong!" A: "He shaves using a small shard of super hard metal from the rocket he traveled on as an infant from Krypton"). You really got the sense that the writers were having a lot of fun with the characters. I'd love if these series were collected up in a bound/graphic novel format, as they contain a big chunk of my childhood.
~jeff
All I have to say to the nay-sayers who will say that it is ridiculous to teach a physics course based on comic books is that this is the coolest thing a physics department could do. I am a physics major at my school and am becoming increasingly disillusioned with how tedious and boring my physics classes are getting, and how little I learn about the real world from them. I am not saying that comics are the real world, but if the approach this course takes is to say "this is realistic, while this is not" then that does help people to understand the real world. I would take a course like this in a second. Done right, this could be one of the most fun courses one takes in college.
There is however the probelm that you kind of ruin the coolness of comic book heroes who somewhat defy the laws of physics, by flying, shooting lasers from their eyes, moving things with their mind, etc. Although I know quite a bit of physics and know that many of these things are impossible, I still enjoy comics very much and am able to suspend my disbelief. I think that using a course like this to get people interested in physics is much better than the standard "Physics for Poets" my school offers which just go over the basics of many areas of physics in unsatisfactory depth and rigor, leaving the students frustrated and uninterested. I say that most anything that gets more people thinking from an analytical point of view is good.
what a waste of your tuition. really.
Now all we have to do is find the school with the course on "Warner Brothers Animation Physics..."
- Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation
- Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly.
- Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter.
- All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
- As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.
- Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
- Everything falls faster than an anvil
And more...
...similarly related Star Wars physics and Dungeons & Dragons physics? My old character could do a 200ft standing jump. I'd like to know why :)
It would have taken less time to point out the things that were based on physics.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Is how the flash could run at Faster than Light Speeds...and how the force made by his feet hitting the Earth doesn't make huge earthquakes.
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
Everybody's making money off that new movie...damnit!
It's an obvious application of Quantum Gravity - when you go over a cliff, you have to look down to collapse the quantum gravity wavefunction, and thus you hit the bottom of the canyon.
At the risk of being a pimple-faced fanboy, Spiderman has "spider strength," the proportional strength of a spider. This allows him to lift many times his own body weight, and might explain how he keeps his arms from ripping off from the centripital force of his swinging.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
the amount of calories
Since "calories" is obviously a plural noun, the phrase should be "the number of calories". Even though we can have fractional calories, the grammatical implication is that it's a countable or integer quantity. For those we use "number of" and, in comparisons, "fewer than" (not "less than").
When we're talking about a measured (vs counted) quantity, that's more like a "real" or "float", then you would use "amount of" -- unless of course you mention the units of measure, which sort of integerizes the whole thing (the opposite of C type promotion rules).
Sorry, but type mismatch in English is something that's been bugging me lately.
-- Alastair
Ze point is; how much physics does it require to defy the laws of physics?
Oh, and what mind control technique superman uses to keep people from noticing that he is Clark Kent?
-By attempting the impossible we can achieve the absurd..
How does Wonder Woman fit into that outfit?
http://www.kubuntu.org/
According to the comic books I read, Superman's cape has a pouch/pocket in it where he stores his (highly compressed) Clark Kent clothes.
That way they're always handy for him to change back into his secret identity (and I guess with super powers its easy to get the wrinkles out), and he doesn't have to worry about somebody ripping them off from the phone booth where he changed when he's off fighting for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
-- Alastair
it's amazing to me how you can read a reply yesterday and post it as news today and get credit for it... heh
how did Superman turn around time by turning around Earth's rotation? How did he reverse Earth's rotation around by flying around it in the wrong direction really-really fast?
Oh, yes, how much energy do you need to circle around earth ~50 times in 1 second, or, assuming that he flies like a sattelite (and, therefore, exerts no force on the planet) accelerates to this velocity?
Hmm... Radius of earth is ~40000 km. So, speed of 1 revolution/sec is 40000km/sec. Approximately 50 revolutions/2 sec= 25rev/sec = 1000000km/sec=10^6 km/sec, which is greater than speed of light. Still using Newtonian mechanics. He accelerates in something like a second, so the acceleration is 10^6km/sec^2=10^9m/sec^2. His mass is ~60 kg, so the force ma = 6*10^10N.
That's a lot. Unfortuanetly, E=mc^2 doesn't provide for impressive enough mass of food. Still,...
;)
What I always wondered is where all that webbing comes from in the first place. I mean, that web cartridge can only fit so much material inside. They do run out eventually, but it always seemed to me like he could get way too much out of each one. In the movie, he can just shoot webbing out of his hands. Where do the proteins come from? I'd think that after swinging through the city for a while, he'd starve to death.
[insert witty quote here]
The INFAMOUS Doctor J Problems with the puns. e.g. Doctor J was going in circles trying to figure the angular velocity of the electron.
Wile. E. Coyote problems -
(a)Wile E. Coyote, mass 15kg, jumps upwards off a cliff with an initial velocity of 4 m/s. g=9.8 m/s^2. The cliff is 150m high. How fast does he hit?
(b)He lands on a spring of k=15000 N/m. How much force is exerted by the spring at its maximum compression?
(c)If the spring sticks and has a mass of 10kg, how fast does he leave the ground?
(d)What is the probability that Wile E. Coyote runs into CowboyNeal and catches the Roadrunner?
Express all answers in decimals with four significant figures
(sorry folks, my AP Physics test is Tuesday...)
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Wow. This is -wonderful- flamebait on so many levels. I wonder if DrBiscuit is even really a woman. I'm guessing not.
[insert witty quote here]
Continuing with the whole Star Wars verses Spiderman/comics thread established by JonKatz a few articles ago, it is interesting to note that Star Wars has also been studied scientifically.
A astrophysics by the name of Jeanne Cavelos wrote book called The Science of Star Wars, where she talks about how Star Wars fuelled her interest in space exploration and discusses the whole science of Star Wars. You also have the online Star Wars Technical Commentaries that discuss the scientific plausability of the movies. It's good to know that imagination of others be it Stan Lee or George Lucas can help people think scientifically about both the real world and the imagined.
aus.music.scrapbook
" He'd lose them to explosions caused by atmospheric friction energy greater than a reentry burn."
Yumm..reindeer burgers. Heh, and you thought falling satellites was the only thing you had to worry about.
"He would have been able to get the first burst of energy, but he would have sunk (in an ocean) after that."
Hey, if the Flash is circling the globe in 80 seconds, he doesn't need to worry about sinking -- his biggest concern would be how to keep from flying into space.
We have three cases here.
There is an excellent book by Larry Gonick and Art Huffman to cover this last area. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0062731009 It goes from understanding simple Newtonian and extended body stuff, magnetism and flux, electrical current, to quantum electro dynamics.
It is from this book that I finally grokked *why* a gyroscope will precess or rotate its axis when the axis is not aligned against gravity.
[
Another fun excercise is looking at the physics behind Star Trek. Lawrence M. Krauss wrote a pretty good book on the subject.
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
This story-point has in been fact been subject to much, much debate and discussion by fans.
The consensus seems to be that the sudden stop broke her neck, but that this was more a failed rescue attempt at someone who going to die anyway, than a problem totally unknown to Spidey. That is, he was shocked because he thought he'd been able to save her, and failed. Not that he didn't know that he could fail.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Thor can "fly" ballistically by throwing his hammer and then catching the leather thong on the end a small fraction of a second later. Class discussion: would this really work? Why or why not? If it did work and Thor routinely accellerates several hundred miles per hour in a fraction of a second, we may acribe the fact that his arm is not ripped from its socket to his godly constitution, but how does his helmet stay on his head? (We've seen it knocked off in fights, so we know it has no natural cranially adhesive properties.)
How much energy must his hammer expend in order to generate a lightning flash? What are the potential sources for this energy?
When Thor (or anyone else who is "worthy") holds his hammer, its weight appears to be negligible. For anyone else, the weight is infinite. (We know the mass remains constant. It does not become infinite because of the lack of the normal space-bending effects associated with an infinite mass, and it does not fall to zero because Thor can impart a great deal of momentum with it.) Use Schroedinger's equation to determine a probablity function describing the hammer's weight when nobody is holding it.
I could go on, but I don't want to be more geeky than absolutely necessary.
And the brethren went away edified.
What i want to know is where spiderman gets all his webbing from. Like, in that scene in the movie where Parker is standing on top of a building shooting his load over and over trying to hit the crane successfully, i had to wonder.. doesn't he get, uh, tired eventually? Is his supply inexaustible? where are the glands that's allowing him to store all that stuff in his arm?
In the comic strip i seem to remember something about "web fluid".. but they seemed to imply he was shooting the stuff from a little device. am i remembering wrong? (Of course, the comic strip also implied that his sticky-hands-and-feet thing even worked when he was wearing gloves and shoes.. so i dunno how much you can trust it.)
I'm just thinking, either some process i'm unaware of is going on, or that guy just has an inexaustible supply, if he's able to swing all the way across new york. And if he really is able to shoot fluid in those quantities over and over without breaks getting tired, well, all i have to say is i hope that Parker gets the girl (MJ) in the end of the next movie. For her sake, anyway.
It's kinda cool to know, whether it was intentional or not, that some of the things in comic books are possible, according to the laws of physics as we know them. It adds a bit of plausibility to them.
But one shouldn't be bound to them by any stretch... by reading comic books you enter into a willful suspension of disbelief. Kind of like when you go see a live play. Everyone knows it's not real, but we turn a blind eye to the unlikely or impossible because it makes the experience more enjoyable.
Just so with comic books and the like. Is it physically possible for Spider-man to climb walls? Eh... who cares? It's cool stuff.
Insert witty
We add rockets... to everything.
With an early (like at 9yrs old) exposure to electronics I was lost trying to figure out how Iron Man "charged up" power transistors. I would have suggested they change that to capacitors or something, but once you start applying logic to comic book physics it's time to find a different comic book where the illusion isn't so easily shattered. Probably this has much to do with why I dumped comics and moved straight over to MAD. Hasn't affected me adversely at all %)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
For example, it's pretty well established in the DC unverse that humans can receive a blood transfusion from Superman, and they don't die of hemorrhage from super blood cells perforating their arteries and veins.
So every Kryptonian cell is not "super"-harmful.
Also, Superman is not a total idiot, so he'll undoubtedly be watching a pregnant wife very closely for possible complications from a super-fetus (X-ray vision's better than ultra-sound!). And take action at the first sign of a problem. It's not like they don't have an inkling that it's a high-risk pregnancy.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
I basically messed up everything above. First, I treated Newtons like Jewels. Then, with this speed radius of Superman's orbit will be very close to 0 (speed decreases with radius, and at Earth's surface the speed is 8m/s). Yes, 40000km is the circumference of Earth.
So, now I'm ignoring the acceleration. When Superman flies at R~6000km @ 10^9m/s, his acceleration outwards (that produces the centrifugal force) will be v^2/R=10^18/6*10^6=1.66*10^12m/s^2. We have to subtract g, which acts the other way, but it's negligibely small. OK, now the force is F = ma = 60kg*1.66*10^12m/s^2=10^14N. The work he had done, W=Fs=10^14N * 4*10^7m * 50revolutions = 2*10^24J
OK, now E=mc^2
m = 2*10^24J/(3*10^8m/s)^2 = 2*10^24/9*10^16~10^8kg. That's a lot of food, even if all of it's mass converts to energy (Superman has a matter-antimatter engine?).
Then, imagine the mechanical consequence of such a thing - tidal waves, hurricanes, etc...
Yes, maybe the cause-effect is backwards? If time goes backwards, Earth would go in the other direction by itself. But then, what is flying for?
Can explain Spiderman turning down Mary Jane.
Was kinda surprised that there was no mentrion of this series by George R. Martin, Roger Zelazny, etc. (it's a shared universe series)
Nifty series, but only just now coming back into print (and I still need to lay my hands on the last book...)
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
One of the biggest issues I think our society faces is a lack of basic science. I don't mean a knowledge of facts. We've got plenty of that. Ignorance of the methods of science -- how to do science -- makes us uncritical acceptors of media manipulation.
Anyone who can get someone to learn and do basic physics deserves respect and thanks. I had a teacher like this. He didn't use something so consistently systematic as comic book physics, but we did have a lot of fun doing calulations of pointlessly impossible experiments. I remember going over the calculations for the conversion of velocity to heat in a collision by calculating how fast you would have to throw a tomato at a brick wall to have it fully cooked on impact (never mind that you wouldn't be able to scrape enough of the result together to make a milliliter).
I remember calculating if you spontaneously destructed the sun how much oatmeal you could cook (in cups).
We also did some real physics, like designing a balsa wood bridge (everone got the same materials with no rules on how you could use the materials) to take the greatest load. We did our vector math, we did our elastic collisions, we did our statics. We also did a lot of "frictionless monkey" problems.
I loved physics and even though I ended up a programmer with a history major, I took away a love for and a basic knowledge of science.
Teachers like this are the greatest resource in the world.
...I Learned from Reading Comic Books.
Thats what the course is called, I attend the University of Minnesota (or actually attened...I just got back from graduation ceremonieis), and this course is pretty well know among most of us in the tech majors. This course is insanely popular...and it isn't offered every semester. It is actually less a course, than it is a seminar. A freshman seminar, no less. So I personally didn't get a chance to take it...but I wish I did.
From what I understand this course is incredibly fun, especially for those of us who found physics to be slightly dry freshman year
In any case, yes, this course exists. And yes, it is indeed very popular with the students (like that would be hard to guess).
I already got mine from ACME University.
you don't have to outrun the bear, just the slowest person in your group.
i dunno if it provides lift...but i do know that as Jim Croce would say... "You don't tug on Superman's cape "...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Yes, but does he cover Wil-E-Coyote's portable hole that the Roadrunner can run over but he always falls in to? Inquiring minds want to know...
--Storm
The subject "comic book physics" reminded me of the books by Jean-Piere Petite. He wrote some really nice and interesting comic books, and i think he really managed to illustrate some (advanced) physics/mathematics concepts (relativity, black holes, magneto-hydrodynamics, topology, ...) in his books without confusing his audience with mathematical formulae.
I read the books when i was about two years into studying physics (and they were still interesting), and i wished i'd have read them earlier (maybe about the age of 14 or so). The best thing about the books was, that they would teach you to be curious about nature/mathematics (provided some interest in the subject), and to play with your imagination and new concepts.
There's this website about the book, but apparently it isn't very forthcoming (yet) if you aren't interested in french versions of Anselms adventures. I know there is a german translation of the (originally french) comics (which you can still order at amazon), but couldn't find an english one (maybe there is no one, or the main characters first name isn't "anselm").
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Kakalios was my freshman physics (non-comic) TA.
:)
We did do the gwen stacy problem and several other comic-book problems.
Interesting guy, always gave us donuts to reward us for showing up to his 8AM class
Okay, if vulgarity offends you, please stop reading.
How the hell can Clark and Lois possibly have sex? I mean, wouldn't his cum shot just blow her head clean off? I'd be willing to transfer to U of M to take that course, so long as they answer that question...
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Perhaps the inhabitants of Krypton enjoy similar laws of physics as those of Cybertron.
According to the Transformers FAQ the commonly accepted answer to the question "Where does [Optimus] Prime's trailer go when he transforms?" is that each Transformer has access to a personal "subspace" in another dimension that they can use for storage and teleport objects from. The subspace is also used to store weapons and the changes in mass that occur when massive robots change size and weight, into tiny cassette tapes for instance.
So, true believer, perhaps there is some universal consistency in Comic Book Physics - even across different comic book universes (DC vs. Marvel).
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
If you read the Green Lantern Bible that Niven wrote, then you come to realize that all humaniod creatures in the universe are descended from the Oans. The Oans are, of course, the gaurdians of the universe and founded the Green Lantern core. The Oans' guard power is a super powerful psycic power.
What does this have to do with Superman? Well, since all humaoid life is descended from Oans, then all humanoid life has latent guard power. All of Superman's abilities are psycic in nature. He has heat vision, a primitive form of the kind of thing that was going on in firestarter. He can fly. Many spiritual disiplines say that with practice a person can fly. He can see through things. This is more of a clairavoyance than actuall xray vision. Also Superman is vulnerable to magic.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
or Pr0n Info. Sci.
Oh, wait, Pr0n Human Nutrition...
Also Pr0n Comic Anthropology(so this post is in-topic!)
History major Kristin Barbieri, 19, tried to figure out how much caloric energy the Flash would need to circle the globe in 80 seconds, as he did in one comic book. She concluded that the superhero simply could not have eaten enough to do it.
Duh, he eats at the speed of light too!
The professor estimated Gwen's falling velocity, applied Newton's Second Law of Motion and calculated the G-forces exerted when she went from 95 mph to a standstill in an instant. "It's not surprising her neck broke," Kakalios says.
Kakalios made Gwen's death an exam problem during the course's first semester last fall.
That has got to be one of the most uniquely staged sentences I have ever read. I can stare at it for hours. Somewhere in there is a pun waiting to happen I think. Maybe more.
Whatever pays the bills, and all that. At least it's better than the story of a college professor using school funds to go to strip bars to not only enjoy the scenery, but partake of it as well, then show his sex ed class the videos he took of the excursion... Really, I ain't lyin.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Prof. Kakalios himself wrote an op-ed piece for the Minnesota Star-Tribune here
There's a bit more info here.
The course description:
Science in Comic Books
James Kakalios, Physics
Phys 1905, section 4 (#28788)
2 credits
T 2:30 - 4:25 p.m., FordH 155
How much energy is required to cause the planet Krypton to explode? If you were born on a more massive planet, would you be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound here on Earth? Using concepts and characters from comic books, this class will explore basic notions of physics, chemistry, and biology. In addition to identifying scientific bloopers, we will discuss those cases where the comic creators got the science right. Requires high school algebra and geometry.
</karma whore>
Two hours a week. Seems pretty easy to me, and that's coming from an artsy-type who took a course at the University of Toronto called "The Magic of Physics". I like easy credits.
When I was a freshman at the U of California we had a problem set assigned to our freshman physics class (classical mechanics) that was something along these lines:
"Superman: Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Calculate reasonable estimates of the kinetic energy, power, and impulse, respectively, of these feats; show your work."
As we got back our graded papers the professor remarked that we all pretty were much in the ballpark with our calculations, but one student's numbers were considerably greater. That's when the student said, "Well I used a greater mass than everybody else did since I remembered that Superman is the Man of Steel." He got full credit.
Hmm. According to current theory there are 13 dimensions. We exist
in 4 of them so that leaves 9 left over for all the rest. I think the
Star Trek comics have easily surpassed 9 dimensions. Lets not even
consider the number of dimensions an plains that The Sandman goes to.
What I have always wondered about is the economics of comic books. Who
read the death of Superman? Did you see all of the damage they caused
in the final fight between the two of them in a downtown area? I have
seen whole urban areas reduced to ruble but I never see any reference
to insurances policies against mutants. I never here about how the
stock market took a dive while waiting to find out if the world was
going to be destroyed. Do sales of tabloids go up if some one claims
to be caring $super_hero's baby? Where are all of these headlines?
Where are do these Evil_Super_Weapons manufactures get their funding
from? How does a contractor hide the one million dollars that it
earned from doing a upgrade to the Bat Cave from the IRS without them
asking questions? How does Bruce Wayne write off a million here or
there for replacement BatMobils?
Its things like this that caused me a long time ago to stop reading
Super Hero comics. I much prefer the mental drama comics instead of
the physical drama ones.
I mentioned The Sandman above. This is a prime example of the way
things should be done. When the moon is brought down to earth by one
a which for a spell involving the moon goddess, Gaiman makes a
point of mentioning that a hurricane altered its course as a result.
When Dream goes traveling on earth he uses a old Babylonian god that
is an expert at handling transportation issues like customs and knows
how to work the system. When Dr. Dee makes the whole world go insane
you see bits on TV letting you know that the whole world is indeed
going insane and not just the people in the diner. These things
aren't hidden in the background never to thought of like they are in
most comics for fear that it will ruin suspension of disbelief.
I love comics. I just wish that they didn't exist in a vacuum where
not just the rules of physics don't apply but the rules of economics
and media aren't even mentioned.
Ascii artist &
A calorie is a unit of energy, there are 1000 calories in a dietary calorie.
As far as gross structure of the physical universe is concerned (sizes much larger than the plank scale), the calories of food required is a "real" number and is not countable.
As far as reading food labels is concerned, the calories of food eaten is an "integer" number and is countable.
And considering the context, a physics class, there is no grammatical error in using the word "amount". It only seems akward, because you are thinking of the word "calorie" in a different sense.
To understand special relativity you must think clearly.
1) If Flash runs at the speed of light for 5 minutes STOP
5 minutes in whose frame of reference?
a) In 5 minutes in the earth's frame of reference, the Flash would age 0 minutes.
b) In the frame of reference traveling at the speed of light, time does not progress. You can't spend 5 minutes traveling at the speed of light!!!
This makes no sense, so perhaps you mean this question.
2) If Flash runs near the speed of light for 5 minutes (by his watch), how much time would have passed when he is finished?
The answer is that any amount of time between 5 minutes and infinity could have passed depending on how close the Flash was to the speed of light.
However, there is no where on earth that would take 5 minutes traveling near the speed of light, only seconds. That length of time is on the order of traveling to the Sun.
you know, the black squiggly lines around his head, that sixth sense that says 'danger danger!' This is a quantum effect, that was handed down by the comics god (hereafter referred to as "Stan, the Excelsior") so that THIS superhero will not suffer the same fat as that damn catman, that just had to hide in the box... nuff said!
just a test.. see if this os works :>
Can you imagine what a student he'd fail would write in the evaluation? "THE WORST CLASS, EVER!"
is that when he swings, the web he hangs
by is so long that the pendulum frequency
is ludicrously low. That is why the old
live action Spider Man show only rarely
showed him trying to propell himself that
way: it was slower than molasses in January.
Dammit, I should be going to sleep, but I can't resist chipping in here.
Firstly, the Oans reference is new to me, and a lovely little piece of derivation too. I'm going to have to go and look that one up. (Aside - Niven's one of my personal geek-type heroes, and not just for Ringworld, either.)
The main thing, however, is that I concluded many years ago that the basis of Supe's powers had to be psychic from one single picture. Said image was of the boy from Krypton flying out of the sea, holding a large battle-ship over his head. Now, I followed the chain of logic that, as most of DC's physics were reasonably faithful, lifting a battle ship up with no more support that two hand size areas was impossible (he'd just punch a neat hole thru' the ship). He possibly could have been using his super-breath to create an air-cushion to support the whole of the ship, but he was looking down, plus which super breath wasn't inferred from the drawing (no puffed cheeks, lines from mouth, etc). Thus, the large area of support needed to lift the ship was being provided by some other agency, ergo Superman must have psychic powers.
Now, it's quite possible that DC had some much better explanation, or have already covered all this, but I've never been more than an occasional reader, and this satisfied me (I was young at the time..).
Much later, this little episode made me realise how odd the mechanism of suspension of disbelief is - we'll accept some hugely outrageous things, and choke on one tiny detail, without even noticing another equally implausible but unimportant thing. Still, it's what works that counts...
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Here be Dragons
some will refute that it is impossible to fall until the subject raises a picket with the word "YIKES" painted on it. This tends to catylize the gravitons into a collective downward movement.
I once shot a man who posted too many, "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these"