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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."
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
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
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)
RumbaFlex asked: Oh, and what mind control technique superman uses to keep people from noticing that he is Clark Kent?
He hypnotises them.
In one of the very few Superman comics I have read, some super bad guy goes around creating massive illusions or causing mass hysteria or something like that. So Superman counters by using a giant flying television to Super-Hypnotise everyone to disbelieve any illusions / see what's really in front of their eyes.
Superman spent most of the rest of the comic making excuses as to why he is pretending to be Clark Kent, and covering for where the "real" Clark Kent is, since no one believes his disguise any more.
After the bad guy is caught and Superman un-hypnotises everyone, the comic ends with CK getting an artist to sketch his face. The sketch looks quite different from Superman's face, and Superman figures out that he has been unconsciously maintaining his disguise by hypnotising everyone he meets.
HTH. HAND.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
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!
Yeah, yeah physics again. You might at least reference the square-cube law, such as here for anatomy if you want to educate people on why ants and spiders are so strong. It is also a clue as to why you don't find realy big or tall land animals.
There is also a significant problem with flying dinosaurs & even standing up because of square cube law arguments. Some have seriously proposed that oxygen content was higher for the dino's, other suggest that gravity was lower. Point is, that they are so big, square cube law is a problem for us to understand their existence. There are also huge forms of many modern animals in the fossil record that are a problem for us to understannd because of square-cube law (3 ft wingspan dragonflies, foot long cockroaches, sharks with a 12 ft wide jaw, etc.) Really some interesting problems, albeit somewhat off-topic.
Square cube law is a problem in muscle strenth, bone strength, respiriration, reaction speed, heat dissipation, etc. Unfortunately don't know a really good godd/article to recommend.