The Science of Superheroes
An Interview with Professor James Kakalios
The author of The Physics of Super Heroes and The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics, Professor James Kakalios is a Hollywood science consultant and teacher at the University of Minnesota.
Jokes Professor Jim, “Being a fan of comicbooks and also a physics professor makes me simultaneously a geek and a nerd! You can break the bad news to your readers that I’m already married!”
Given the chance to chat with the Prof about all things Marvel-ous, I jumped at the chance to absorb his brainiac goodness. For starters, I wondered why he uses superheroes to teach teens physics, and what initially got him started.
“When you try to explain physics to people who are not going to college and are not going to be scientists or engineers, they have a great deal of insecurity about their ability to understand the science,” answers Jim.
“In some ways that gets in the way of them hearing what you’re saying. But if you tell the same story and add a little Spider-Man, the shields don’t come up. If you can tie the science to some sort of familiar narrative, there’s a much greater chance of them understanding it, remembering it, and seeing how it can be applied. Basically it’s a trick, a way of getting people to eat their spinach by hiding it in superhero mythology.
“It all started,” he continues, “when I was teaching a regular physics class for freshmen back in the Nineties and I was trying to come up with an exam problem that dealt with the principle of momentum that hadn’t been done a hundred times before. It occurred to me that the death of Spider-Man’s girlfriend, in Amazing Spider-Man #121, could be analysed from a physics point of view. It turned out to be a textbook illustration of the Impulse-Momentum Principle.
“Gwen Stacy is knocked off the top of a bridge by the Green Goblin. Spider-Man shoots his webbing down and stops her half a second before she hits the ground. How fast is Gwen going when the webbing reaches her? How much force does the webbing have to exert in order to stop her? It turned out that Gwen’s death was the one part of the comicbook that didn’t require suspension of disbelief. Unlike a bungee chord that slows you down over many seconds, Spider-Man’s webbing jerks her to a stop and breaks her neck. It was a sad day for comicbooks, but a solid day for science.
“Since then I’ve used superheroes many times to illustrate my points and make the science easier to swallow. From analysing the strength of Hawkeye’s bow to the chemical composition of Captain America’s shield, it’s been this really fun thing, a happy add-on to my day duties as a mild-manned physics professor!”
Captain America’s shield is famous for being both completely unbreakable and able to absorb even the most punishing impact. I ask Jim, “What’s that all about?”
“To create Cap’s shield you need an alloy that has two unique, contradictory attributes,” explains Professor K. “It has to be a great shock absorber that can absorb a blow even when struck by Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir. But things that tend to be good shock absorbers are soft and squishy. Think about an airbag. So what you need to do is combine it with an alloy that has great strength and rigidity. That’s a very tall order."
Besides his mighty shield, Captain America is himself a scientific miracle, the sole recipient of a Super-Soldier serum that transformed the previously frail Steve Rogers into a perfect physical specimen. Is there anything today that can replicate that effect?
Replies Kakalios, “They’re called steroids! He’s not indestructible or bullet proof, so the serum is a lot like modern steroids in that they too build muscle mass and strength.”
While Captain America opted for better living through chemistry, The Hulk gained his powers from a hefty dose of Gamma Radiation. Any chance I could Hulk-out doing the same?
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” says Jim, shaking his head. “Back in the Nineties, a comicbook explained that what powers The Hulk is a super form of cancer damage. Although in the real world, radiation destroys cells, in the Hulk it provokes runaway cell growth that proves beneficial. While he’s not technically indestructible, his cells regenerate so quickly, you simply can’t harm him.
“Obviously, at the end of the day, one has to say, ‘Relax, it’s just a comicbook.’ But if you really want to be mystified by something, you can ask yourself ‘Why does his shirt rip, why do his shoes rip, but his pants stay on?’ Turns out they’re held on by a force even stronger than gamma radiation: The Comics Code Authority!”
Next I ask the Prof is he would agree that, for the most part, the science behind Iron Man is more real-world than most other superheroes?
“One of the things I love about the Iron Man and Avengers movies is the fact that pretty much all of the technology exists today,” he says, “or else it’s coming soon. We’ve got exoskeletons. We’ve got armour plating. We’ve even got jet boots. The thing with Tony Stark is he puts it all together in a very cool way.
“If you wanted to though, you could take a jet pack to work right now. Provided you only live a couple of blocks away from work. The problem is it takes an awful lot of energy to do what Iron Man does. Though we have most of the tech, what we don’t have is a small portable energy supply, so the one miracle invention that makes Iron Man tick is Tony’s arc reactor. The little thing he wears in his chest that’s the size of a hockey puck but puts out the power of three nuclear power plants. If we knew how to make that, we wouldn’t need super heroes! The world would be a profoundly different place.”
Could the greatest minds in the real world ever hope to replicate what Tony Stark manages to create in a cave, using scrap?
“Although the arc reactor doesn’t really exist, scientists have been trying to build something similar for a very long time,” reveals Kakalios. “The closest thing existing today is a small scale fusion reactor. They’re building one in Belgium, the ITER, which stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. The physics behind it is the same as a hydrogen bomb. The thing is, people have been working on this problem for over 50 years now, and the joke is, they’re always 20 years away from cracking it. Yet they feel they’re getting close enough now to justify building a prototype reactor. If it actually works, I don’t know if it’ll happen in my lifetime, but my children’s lives will be profoundly different.
“This is the beauty of both superheroes and science. Superheroes, especially the ones created back in the Sixties and Seventies, placed an emphasis on being smart. On knowing things and creative problem solving. Being intelligent was a good thing, and when you read those old comicbooks, you believed you could make a difference too. That you could make a better world. Together with a variety of moral lessons, they gave young minds a lot of guidance. Just as long as you didn’t follow them for fashion tips!”
With class now dismissed, I’d love to hear from you. What’s your favourite example of comicbook super-science?