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The Physics of Superman
eieken writes "The physics of Superman mostly belong in the realm of comic books, but some scientists decided to give their input on the matter. The article tells of 'a scientific experiment in which a researcher put several chickens in a centrifuge and raised them in twice-normal gravity for months at a time. When they emerged, the chickens were stronger and had larger bones and muscles, and greater endurance. In other words, they were superchickens.' Do they have human sized centrifuges?"
That chicken thing is just weird. That must have been a while ago, I don't see how anyone could get the ethical approval to do something like that. Just how would you keep the chickens in for months at a time anyway? How would you feed them and such? Do you stop the thing for a moment, do what you need, then start it back up?
That said, the article comments on Superman flying. I read somewhere recently (some list of facts about Superman) some interesting stuff. One of the things was that "Faster than a speeding bullet... more powerful than a locomotive..." stuff was not part of the original Superman comics, it was apparently made up for a radio show. But more interesting to me, apparently Superman COULDN'T fly. He was able to jump REALLY HIGH. You know, "able leap tall buildings in a single bound." At some point that somehow turned into flying (this was a bulleted list of facts type thing, so it didn't expand on these).
There was a special on TLC, Discovery, Science Channel, or some such recently about the physics of Superman. I didn't see it (I'm sure it will be re-run), but I remember from a commercial that they said it would actually be MORE PAINFUL for Lois to be caught by Superman than to simply fall to her death. I don't know why, you'd have to watch to find out I guess.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Speaking of Larry Niven - he wrote about the difficulties Superman and Lois Lane would have in an essay called Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex.
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I don't feel like dredging my memory for the proper physics formulas, so maybe some bored physics student can help me out. Let's say I wanted to live in 2x gravity on Earth for a few months (or years), for the healthful aspects.
So I build a huge centrifuge shaped like a bowl, with a track at a certain angle. You'd like to spin the track at a speed and angle such that I get a simulated 2x gravity, while having the angle such that my weight would be perpendicular to the apparent floor. You'd build walls perpendicular to the track (and a parallel ceiling) as well so that things would seem normal.
So how wide would the track need to be, and what angle would you need, so as to have an approximately normal environment? Obviously if the ring is too small, you'll get different forces on each part of your body and you'll notice it. There's probably no good psychological data on what size you "need", so let's see some numbers at different sizes, and see what would seem reasonable.
Also, is there any problem with this scenerio? I've never heard of it being done, which means maybe there's something I'm missing as far as practicality.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
In Melbourne (Australia), we have an amusement park named "Luna Park" that had a really cool ride called the Gravitron, that looked like this. It was essentially a human sized centrifuge, where you walked in, and lay down against a padded mat that was lying on the wall. Then the ride would start, the thing would speed up and the the g's would start building up and press you against the wall.
:)
Which enabled you to do stupid things like go upside down and have your face stretched. It was cool and my favourite ride at that age. Perhaps it contributed to my huge bone density and muscle strength of later years
Not sure if it is still there... anyone know? Anyone remember this?
Agreed. Also, the increased density is in response to the forces from an altered environment. Assuming the organism to be adaptive, then those "powers" would slowly be lost in the earth's environment, no? Akin to the way astronauts lose muscle tissue when they go into space, no matter how much they exercise.
un burrito me trampeó.
Chickens can fly
Not really. Chickens can fly for very short distances and limited heights. They can get over fences and travel maybe 40 feet at a time. After one such "long" flight, they can barely get off the ground and prefer to run.
they just have their wings clipped to prevent this.
Chickens that are kept outdoors in pens without high walls have their wings clipped. I don't know what the minimum "safe" wall height is, but most unroofed outdoor pens I've seen use wire mesh about seven feet high. Smaller pens can use shorter walls because the chickens need quite a bit of horizontal room to reach their maximum height above ground. Wing clipping doesn't actually reduce their wings' lift much, mainly it just removes the ends of the primary feathers which are necessary for controlled flight. Chicken flight is pretty erratic and wild at best, and without those feather tips they just can't control it at all.
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Good point... of course it depends what context you're in. If your goal is to lift heavy things all things all the time, the extra bulk will be useful all of the time. More realistically if you need to move quickly sometimes, it would becomes a burden. So what's an advantage depends on the needs.
In fact, since this study indicates our bodies strengthen and weaken based on the average load, I'll go ahead and guess that the size and strength we develop to is "about right" for our particular usage pattern. In other words, going about your day to day activities your body will adjust to "about right" muscle and bone strength, so as to handle most tasks easily and not waste too much effort building infrastructure that won't be needed often if ever.
Of course, many of us seem to disagree with the natural results. Though in reality I sit at a computer most of the day and have little need for muscular development, I exercise a couple times a week to fool my body into thinking I need a little extra bone and muscle tissue.
Cheers.