I picked up this book because the bookstore didn’t have The Physics of Star Trek
in. I’m kind of glad I did. I thought it would be a critique of the physics of comic books, but it’s not. Rather, it’s more of a physics for jocks, using comic books as the vehicle to make physics interesting.
James Kakalios is a professor at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches a seminar for freshman titled Everything I Needed To Know About Physics I Learned From Reading Comic Books
. My understanding is this book grew from that seminar.
He starts with Newtonian mechanics, illustrated using Superman. The original Golden Age Superman, who was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound because he was raised on Krypton with a heavier gravity than Earth. In other words, he was all buff like we would be on the moon. None of this yellow sun silliness and problems with Kryptonite radiation being his Achilles Heel. Anyway, Kakalios walks us through the physics and math explaining how being able to jump 660 feet implies that gravity on Krypton had to be about 15 times that on Earth. And then he shows how that can happen, and even why it might explain why Krypton exploded. See, there couldn’t be that much more matter on Krypton than on Earth, if Krypton would be the same size as Earth. The density of solids is pretty constant. The other conventional option is that Krypton would then have to be 15 times larger. But that doesn’t work so well either, as at that size most planets will either be gas giants or collapse in on themselves. But Kakalios then comes up with a third option, using a bit of very densely packed white dwarf star matter, which is extremely dense indeed. Outside of the matter in a black hole, it’s the densest matter in the universe. Anyway, the solution is to put a small amount of white dwarf matter in the center of Krypton, with the rest of Krypton being regular matter. This gives a huge gravity, but also makes Krypton unstable. Earthquakes and other catastrophes would occur. A smart scientist could see the portents and send his children off to other planets to be raised.
The rest of the book is quite like this, covering all sorts of physics topics. Kakalios makes a promise in the beginning that no mathematics tougher than algebra would be used. So at the end of the book when he starts explaining string theory and how Kitty Pryde’s powers might work, he has to wave his hands a bit and say magic happens here
because he can’t explain the math without using calculus or tougher mathematics. Still, it’s the best explanation of physics I’ve seen, with the possible expection of Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History Of Time.
Possibly better, because Kakalios has a sense of humor. A bad sense of humor, but if you have any amount of geek in you, you’ll find it funny. Stuff like his explanation of electricity. He illustrates it with a panel from Spider-Man featuring Electro: A scene from Amazing Spider-Man #9, where the supervillian Electro simultaneously demonstrates an advanced concept in electromagentism and a significantly less sophisticated fashion sense
. Or his footnote that Young readers during the Silver Age could be forgiven if they reached the conclusion that being struck by lightning, preferably in conjunction with some other hazardous activity, was one of the best things that could happen to them, second only to being exposed to massive doses of radiation.
See, that’s funny stuff! Well, funny if you read bunches and bunches of comics.
I’m guessing my friend Steve would like this book. If you have no geek in you, you probably won’t.
Title: The Physics Of Superheroes
Author: James Kakalios
Imprint / Publisher: Gotham Books / Penguin
Format: Trade paperback
Length: 364 p. (includes index)
Publication Date: September 2006 (trade paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-592-40242-9
Subject: Physics — Study and teaching
Subject: Science in popular culture
Subject: Comic books, strips, etc. in education
Subject: Comic books, strips, etc. — History
LC Classification: QC23.2 .K35 2005
