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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."
Chalk it up to poor scripting. The bullets were FX, but the thrown gun was real. :)
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"
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.
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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
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.
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?