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An Engineer Looks at Superheroes
Having an engineering degree makes it hard to watch superhero movies. Antman’s ability to shrink and grow, for example, is supposedly done by changing the distance between the atoms in his body. Therefore, no matter his size, he’s still 200lbs. Fine. Except that this 200lb man can ride on the back of an ant when he’s tiny. And when he’s 80ft tall, instead of floating off into the air like a hot air balloon, he’s heavy enough to smash a passenger jet when he falls on it.
The Six Million Dollar Man and the Winter Soldier had bionic arms that enabled them to pick up cars. Why didn’t their arms rip out of their very unbionic shoulder sockets, or why didn’t their backbones collapse?
And remember the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeves? At the climax, the evil Lex Luthor launches two nuclear missiles – one aimed at America’s east coast and the other at the west coast – leaving Superman with the dilemma of deciding which coast to save.
He destroys the east coast missile (well done, Chris) but can’t quite catch up to the other one, and Lois Lane, along with California, is obliterated. Okay, that makes sense. How does he solve this terrible problem? He flies faster than the speed of light and turns back time.
In other words, he can’t catch up to a missile lumbering along at the speed of sound – a mere 750 mph, depending upon temperature and air pressure – but he can fly faster than 186,282 miles per second, or 670,616,629 miles per hour!
No wonder kids avoid the STEM subjects in school these days!
Published in General
Well it’s kinda old now, as is Superman. Maybe you “had to be there.”
In retrospect, I think it gives us little clues as to how Zack Snyder would have approached a Superboy treatment. Maybe throw in some methane infernos while Clark learns to manage his diet better. It explains why in Smallville he sleeps in the barn.
Conservation of mass is conservative. Ha!