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."

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Batman and the vat of acid

[jone_stone]

I once had a chemistry test in high school based on a Batman comic. Batman and Robin were falling into a vat of acid. It looked like the end for the dynamic duo. But after they fell in Robin was astonished to find that they didn't get burned.

"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.