Although Spider-man is stronger than a normal man, his muscles and ligaments would not survive a sudden catch when falling unless the web is slightly elastic.
When any object is moving it has momentum, the faster it goes and the bigger it is the more momentum it has. To stop an object it takes a force acting over a period of time. The longer the time you have to stop an object the less force you need.
If Spider-man’s web is not elastic it will be a very abrupt stop (short time), which means a massive force acting on him to stop his fall.
If his web is elastic that allows more time to pass as he slows his fall, this reduces the force.
When swinging through the air Spider-man can only ever swing to a lower height than he starts from.
During a swing Spider-man starts with gravitational potential energy (GPE), this is transformed into kinetic energy (KE) as he swings down, then back to gravitational potential energy as he swings back up. He will also lose some energy due to air resistance.
But he can’t gain more GPE than he started with and so can’t swing higher.
The only way he can gain a little more height is to swing his legs during the swing, but this will only add a little more energy and work once per swing.
The Batmobilehas a grappling hook that Batman can deploy to allow him to speed round corners at speeds far exceeding normal cornering.
The force needed to turn a corner can be easily calculated.
The force the tyres can produce can also be calculated.
Working with an inner city corner with a radius of about 10 m, an average family car (1200 kg) could corner at a maximum speed of about 50 mph with a force of 9,600 N.
On the extreme end a F1 car (650 kg) could corner at 73mph with a force of 10,400 N.This is because the extra down force created by the F1 car adds to the grip of the car.
So to be better than both of these the bat mobile (2000 kg as an
estimate given the weapons etc.) uses a grappling hook.
If batman were to take the corner at 100 mph then it would take a force of 60,274 N. The tyres would provide 16,000 N of this leaving 44,244 N for the grapple cable.To provide this force a steel cable would need a diameter of about 9 cm, which is not impossible, just bulky.
At times when Batman needs to disappear he resorts to a sonic device that attracts a cloud of bats.Bats use ultrasound to find food and communicate.
Ultrasoundsare longitudinal waves like sound waves that are at a higher frequency than humans can hear.
Human hearing range is about 20 – 20,000 Hz.
Bats hearing range is about1000 – 150000 Hz
There are ultrasound devices on the market for repelling bats, most of these have been found not to work, however it has been shown the bats can be attracted by sound. Bats can also be attracted to electronic mosquito repellers that mimic the sound of dragonflies. This is because dragonflies are a good food source for bats.
So if Batman was near a colony of bats he could use a sonic device to attract them, but it would need to be at dusk or dawn as this is when bats are most active.
Human beings and other animals use ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to provide energy for the body to work. ATP gives energy when it loses an inorganic phosphate (Pi) molecule and becomes ADP (adenosine diphosphate).
ATP = ADP + Pi+Energy!
Human Torch's energy production sites generate a different of energy containing molecule called adenine ribo-heptaphosphene, AR-HP. This molecule provides much higher levels of energy and provides the Human Torch with the energy needed to ‘flame on’.
The flame that Human Torch produces is a low level plasma, the fourth state of matter in which electrons separate from atoms.
The colour he burns depends on the fuel and the temperature. At low temperature it is oxygen and possibly nitrogen that are burning (These produce yellow to red flames). The red/orange colour also suggest he burns between 800–2000 OC, if he burnt at more than 6000 OC he would be blue.
The Flashhas evolved in comics over the years and is now capable of running at any speed, even faster than the speed of light. This allows him to time travel and be in several places at once.
In reality physicists believe nothing can travel faster than light. This is because the energy needed exponentially increases as you get closer to the speed of light. This means that a small increase in speed towards the speed of light (the dotted line) takes a massive amount of energy (the Red line on the graph).You can never get enough energy to accelerate a mass to the speed of light.
The speed of light is 300,000,000 m s-1
In the comic world the flash uses the ‘Speed force’ to travel at any speed without the need for massive amounts of energy needed in the real world. This allows him to do many interesting things including time travel.
A projectile is an object that:
- Is travelling through the air.
- Has only one force acting on it (Force due to gravity).
- Has no thrust or driving force.
This makes an arrow a projectile. The problem for the Green Arrow is that the arrow begins to fall faster and faster over longer distances as gravity accelerates it. To shoot further the Green Arrow must aim higher than the target so it falls to hit it.
For the greatest distance the Green Arrow needs to shoot at 45O, this means the launch speed is equally split between keeping the arrow in the air and giving it distance. An angle more than 45O will increase how high the arrow flies, but decrease the distance.
The cells in your body regularly replicate themselves. This is happening at a rate of millions of cells per second in your body and after 5 – 7 years nearly all the cells in your body will have been replaced. Your skin is replaced every 5 – 10 weeks. The faster cells in the human body take about 8 minutes to replicate themselves.
This process is called mitosis and begins with the copying of a cell’s DNA and then the splitting of the cell in two.
Wolverine’s cells regenerate at a much higher rate. In a normal human it takes days if not weeks for a cut to heal. Wolverine often heals in less than a minute meaning his regeneration is happens at least 10,000 times faster.
The best known regenerators are lizards who can lose their tails to distract predators. The fastest regenerating lizards grow the tail back in 3 months, again much slower than Wolverine’s ability.
Antman is capable of changing his size to become extremely small. To do this Antmandoesn’t lose any atoms, but shrinks all his atoms down to a new size. If he did lose atoms his brain and body would not function properly. This means he has the same mass, but a smaller volume giving him a huge density.
An atom is mostly empty space (more than 99.999999 %) between the electrons and the nucleus. So you would think shrinking it wouldn’t be a problem, you just reduce the free space. In fact if we could remove the space in atoms, the whole human race would fit into a space the size of an apple.
The problem with shrinking atoms is that electrons are restricted to specific ‘shells’ around an atom and the atom would break down if the electrons moved closer to the nucleus. In fact the electrons would be absorbed into the protons in the nucleus which would turn into neutrons (as they do in a neutron star). This leaves you with sub-atomic particles that are no longer part of atoms.
The comics get around this by having ‘Pym particles’, these particles discovered by Antmansomehow allow the atom to shrink without collapsing.
“Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” – Quote attributed to a scientist from 1901 called Simon Newcomb.
However, flight was something that mankind had been attempting for hundreds of years, from early evidence of ancient Chinese kites to the famous glider sketches by Leonardo da Vinci (born in 1452). The first powered, manned flight is attributed to the Wright brothers; they flew their glider for 120 feet in 1903.
The X-man Angel flies on wings like an eagle, this is still considered by many people to be impossible. Research has shown that the wings needed to lift a human would be about 15 metres across. The bigger problem, however, is the lack of correct muscle structure or power to flap the wings- if you couldn’t hold the gymnastics MalteseCross position on the rings you wouldn’t be able to hold the wing gliding.
Much like the old quote though, be careful of saying something is impossible. There are many new lightweight and strong materials to make wings and ways to create artificial muscles, so who knows?
Many people are trying... one project on the internet is this one called the Falcon Project.
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Nightwingdoesn’t have a superpower, but is trained in many forms of martial arts and is a highly trained and physically fit individual. He is also extremely fit, fitness comes in several different forms including; cardiovascular fitness, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, body composition and speed.
To have cardiovascular fitness Nightwing would have a very efficient system for aerobic respiration. Aerobic respiration is exercise that uses oxygen and is used for exercise below maximum effort for longer periods of time, like long distance running.
Aerobic respiration formula:
Glucose + Oxygen Energy + Water + Carbon Dioxide.
To have speed and muscular enduranceNightwing would need better anaerobic respiration, this is short term energy for high intensity activity that doesn’t use oxygen, and results in muscle fatigue due to the build up of lactic acid, a by-product of anaerobic respiration. Both these systems use energy stores in the body that must then be replenished after the exercise.
Anaerobic respiration formula:
Glucose Energy + Lactic acid.