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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?"
Is it time to welcome our new super-chicken overlords?
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Looks like they should have put their web server in the centrifuge as well...
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
see the book "The Physics of Superheroes". It's about exactly what you would expect.
You could only get so much bigger (bones, muscle, etc) before it wasn't an advantage anymore, right? I mean, growing something in higher gravity so that it creates a stronger 'infrastructure' (for lack of a better term) would only be beneficial up to a certain point, at which point the weight of said 'infrastructure' would weight you down so as to defeat the purpose....
Apparently they tasted just like Christopher Reeve.
When you find yourself in danger,
When you're threatened by a stranger,
When it looks like you will take a lickin',
There is someone waiting,
Who will hurry up and rescue you,
just Call for Super Chicken!
Fred, if you're afraid you'll have to overlook it,
Besides you knew the job was dangerous when you took it
He will drink his super sauce
And throw the bad guys for a loss
And he will bring them in alive and kickin'
There is one thing you should learn
When there is no one else to turn to
Call for Super Chicken!
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Everytime you mod me down, a scientist centrifuges a chicken.
Please, think of chickens.
I think a rotisserie is like a really morbid ferris wheel for chickens. It's a strange piece of machinery... "We will take the chicken, kill it, impale it, and then rotate it. And I'll be damned if I'm not hungry! Because spinning chicken carcasses make my mouth water! I like dizzy chicken. With a side of potatoes of some sort."
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
For anyone interested in the development of Supermans powers as the series progressed, check out this website:
http://www.johnath.com/~david/etc/superman.html
As other posters have mentioned, yes, it is true that he started without flying ability -he could leap only one eighth of a mile. The development of his powers is actually quite staggering, going from what nowadays would be a lesser superhero, to being one of the most powerful superheroes in the combined comic book multiverse.
I've heard rumors to the effect that if you attack them with a sword repeatedly, it will send a call out to dozens of other superchickens which will all attack you until you flee indoors or scroll to the next area.
God spoke to me.
Not only can they fly, but they think nothing of beating up Klingon chickens. These chickens are so bad, they'll rip off their drumsticks and smack you upside the head with them. These chickens are so strong, you have to fry them in 40 weight motor oil. These are SERIOUS chickens.
Not really. Chickens can fly...
'Nuff said.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
It's called falling...with style.
When I was an undergrad taking lower division Newtonian Physics my prof assigned a problem set along the lines of:
"Superman: the man of steel. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound:
1) Calculate Superman's kinetic energy to go faster than the bullet
2) Determine the amount of work Superman would do pushing against the locomotive to make it go backwards 1 km on a level track
3) Compute the impulse generated by Superman to leap a tall building
Most of the class did OK, I got all the answers in the ballpark, but one student had answers that were an order of magnitude greater than anybody elses'. When the prof asked the student why his answers were so high, he replied "Well, it seems as if I used a higher mass than anybody else - you DID say that Superman was the man of steel, didn't you?"
He got full credit.
A the risk of going off topic
...and came down. With a thud and without a single solitary flap. Stone dead. Ooops.
When I was at school one of the Biology teachers (let's call him Mr Mudie) was covering the topic of "Birds 'n Flight 'n Stuff" and he borrowed a quail from the city university. Quail tend to be more on the 'flutter' rather than 'soar' end of the flight scale. So, Mr Mudie has this quail in his hands and says (I paraphrase) "..and of course quail don't fly so well" and launches the bird high into the air...
It went up.....
Of course, he proved his point - they don't fly so well
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
Me too. It's called falling.
:x
I worked in one of those for a whole summer once. I was that dude in the centre with the speed button. So I basically spent about 12 hours a day spinning for about 4 months. The trick to not getting totally fucked up was not to move your head outside the plane of rotation. Move head left and right, fine, but if you moved up and down it was trippy. At the end of every ride, someone would always ask why I wasn't sticking to the walls...
;)
The amusement park was right beside a beach so I'd get chicks coming in with their two piece bikini's. At a certain speed of rotation, the panel you lean against would slide up. At this speed and force, a lot of the women couldn't lift their arms and hands away from beside them - they were as good as pinned down. It took me a few weeks, but I pefected tweaking the speed just right to have those panels slide up and down repeatedly. And in doing so, I managed to "jiggle" many a breast out from under a bikini top!
Yeah, I'll go to hell, but damn, it made the job worthwhile
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.