4/26/2007

SUPERHERO PHYSICS


From an article in MIT news:

When the Green Goblin kidnapped Spiderman's girlfriend, Gwen Stacey, and pushed her from the George Washington Bridge to her death, the debate raged in comic book circles for years: Was it the fall that killed her or Spidey's attempt to save her by catching her in webbing mid-fall, causing her neck to snap?

If Gwen has a mass of 50 kilograms, falls 300 feet and acquires a velocity of 95 mph, there would be 10g of force on her body, which she could potentially survive. But stopping short against all that force in half a second would certainly break her neck, as the Green Goblin declared in a later issue after Kakalios was widely quoted making the same calculation. "If I can teach a homicidal maniac like the Green Goblin about forces and motion, I'm making a difference," he said.



1 comment:

Sunshine said...

read this in wikipedia, too. si spidey nga daw ang may kasalanan.

kakafrustrate naman yung spiderman 3, coz they reduced gwen's role to a mere hot chick classmate. it could've been any other girl. to think gwen played a big role in the comics....oh well...