The Physics of Superheroes: Miracle Exceptions Make Comic Books (sort of) Realistic

The cover of the book

Have you ever been reading a comic book and think that what your favorite superhero is doing is completely unrealistic? No? Welp, James Kakalios made a book about it anyway, and (kind of) busts these myths by showing how superheroes can do what they do in his book "The Physics of Superheroes," with a lot of explanation for how much better they would have to do things in order to accomplish certain tasks. For example, the Flash would have to have a crazy metabolism in order to run at even 1 percent the speed of light, because in order to run that fast, he would have to eat over 150 million cheeseburgers... without becoming obese... or becoming broke.

 And what about Superman? He could jump over a 660-foot skyscraper.... if Krypton was 15 times denser than earth. Except... the problem with that is finding denser matter to make such a planet. The Flash could run up the same skyscraper... kind of. He would scale the skyscraper between steps. (For more on the Flash, see this link.

Shrinking things is another subject covered in this book. Ant-Man has the ability to shrink himself without becoming incredibly dense and possibly unable to move. Why would he be so dense? Well, he would need to either make the atoms smaller (not that easy), remove large quantities of atoms (all your senses would be impaired, plus you would have to find somewhere to keep them all), or push the atoms closer together. (That would make them really dense.)

And if the Flash were to say "Flash Rules" while running towards you, what would you hear him say? Welp, the answer seems obvious, "Flash Rules," but it is more complicated than you might think. There are three ways you could hear it. If he were running slower than the speed of sound, you would hear "Flash Rules," as you would expect. If he were running faster than the speed of sound, you would hear "Rules Flash," because you would hear him say "Rules" before the word "Flash" could travel to you. If he was running at exactly the speed of sound, you would hear both words at the same time, so something like, "Frlualsehs." (Flash and Rules hitting your ears at the exact same time)  Note that all of this is assuming he starts at a certain distance, says, "Flash," and then runs halfway towards you, then says, "Rules."

These topics, and many more, are covered in this book, with simple physics calculations, and simple explanations. You can follow along easily with these calculations, and as James Kakalios said in the beginning of the book, you would not need to know anything too complicated.

This book was amazing. It's like a physics textbook, but mixed with a history of comic books, with a sprinkle of humor. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know how superheroes do what they do without getting motion sickness, becoming morbidly obese, or killing themselves. I found myself reading it in the car on the way home from school, even with my tablet within reach. It's that good.

The Vsauce3 video below shows another example of what Superman can do that wasn't mentioned in this book.

Oh yeah, and here's the author's website.