Slashdot Mirror
Comic Book Physics
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."
I doubt Xmen follows any physics Blades of steel no matter how strong, still require immense pressure to cut through metal yes Wolverine cuts through it like butter Flying? oh please. Transferance of abilities through touch? Controlling the weather? Where do these follow any known laws of physics?
Chalk it up to poor scripting. The bullets were FX, but the thrown gun was real. :)
I've always thought that the houses (family names) of Krypton were based off of the letters in the Americal alphabet. So we have the house of El (Kal-El, Jor-El, Zor-El), their neighbours, the house of Em (Dev-Em) and the final house, the house of Zee (Van-Zee)
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.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
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.
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...
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
He can fly up, defying gravity. I assume he doesnt have to obey gravity to fall.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Whatever happened to reading the book and applying the concepts?
Its this "creativity" bullcrap I have to put up with in high school that is retarding my education. Instead of giving me points for effectively showing knowledge of and applying the concepts, I get points deducted for not having neat cutesy skits, posters, etc.
They don't hand-hold you in university, why should you be hand-held in high school?
Actually most all telekinetic abilities are impossible.
... If it were on Yoda, then it would crush and kill him. If it weren't on Yoda, then that really complicates things, because now you have a 3 way interaction between the spaceship, Yoda, and the mysterious point in space that is "really" doing the pushing!
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.
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
Consider the density of the cardiovascular system in your body. Any given cell in your body cannot be 4-5 cells away from a blood vessel; otherwise, it'd die; thus the reason for artery (big) -> arteriole -> capillary (small) -> venule -> vein (big) progression (well, that and blood pressure). If all you saw of a person were his vessels, you'd easily be able to identify him.
Being that dense, the magnetic attraction would be evenly distributed throughout the entire body.
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
Superman, while on earth, can hear someone scream on a spacestation beyond jupiter. He can blow out stars while caughing. He can travel several tousand time the speed of light. He can fool people he is a completely different person with just a pair of glasses. What kind of physics can explain that?
What? Isn't it possible that a much stronger magnetic field would be able to do it?
From what I can read from your argument, it's close to "if a tiny push from a toddler can't move a car then it can't be pushed at all."
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.
Right on. I don't find Searle's rejoinders to some of the counterarguments - especially his rejoinder to the Systems Reply - particularly convincing. If I were to memorize the book, I would actually be an entity which understands Chinese - it's just that there's no way to communicate, except by way of an interpreter, between the mind I think of as "me" and the mind which speaks Chinese. Just like you, as you point out, have no direct understanding of the neurons firing in your head.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
Because it looks cool on film.
There's no other reason. In the real world calling karate "useless" against attackers with machine-guns is the understatement of the century or something.
I like the Indiana Jones episode where he is faced by some martial-arts ninja who hops around screams and shouts, waves his hands around menacingly and prepares to attack. Indiana lifts his gun and pulls the trigger once. "Bang". Attacker drops dead. End of scene.
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?
he stands there with his chest out smiling as the bullets bounce off. The bad guy empties his gun, and with no other options in front of him he throws the gun at Superman, who then ducks so he doesn't get hit.
This should be covered in the physics class!
Dodging bullets aimed at the chest means 1) Superman would have to move his entire body to avoid getting hit in the chest, and 2) Superman would have to move extremely fast to avoid the bullets in the first place. Moving that much mass (Superman must have a lot of mass) that quickly uses a LOT of energy! More energy, it would appear, than it takes to simply absorb the impact of the bullets.
On the other hand, a gun throw at the head means that 1) Superman only has to move faster than the bad guy can throw (much slower than bullets!), and 2) Superman only has to duck his head instead of move his entire body. This would take very little energy. Less energy, it would appear, that it would take to absorb the impact of the gun on his face (and still maintain his smug smile).
Superman might be all muscle but he isn't stupid -- he's efficient. He knows better than to waste energy when he might fight the big fight in just a few pages/scenes.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'