The Physics of Superheroes: Spectacular Second Edition
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Popular accounts of the history of electricity and magnetism are found in: Electric Universe: The Shocking True Story of Electricity by David Bodanis (Crown, 2005); The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell by Basil Mahon (John Wiley & Sons, 2003); and A Life of Discovery: Michael Faraday, Giant of the Scientific Revolution by James Hamilton (Random House, 2002).
SECTION THREE- MODERN PHYSICS
There are many excellent overviews of quantum physics written for the nonspecialist. Highly recommended are: Thirty Years That Shook Physics: The Story of Quantum Theory by George Gamow (Dover Press, 1985) and The New World of Mr. Tompkins by G. Gamow and R. Stannard (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Excellent, clear discussions of cutting-edge research in string theory can be found in: The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene (W. W. Norton, 1999); The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); The Future of Spacetime by Stephen W. Hawking, Kip S. Thorne, Igor Novikov, Timothy Ferris, and Alan Lightman (W. W. Norton and Company, 2002); Quintessence: The Mystery of Missing Mass in the Universe by Lawrence Krauss (Basic Books, 2000); and Warped Passages by Lisa Randall (Ecco, 2005).
The solid-state physics revolution that has transformed all of our lives is documented in the highly readable Crystal Fire: Birth of the Information Age by Michael Riordan (Norton, 1997) and The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution by T. R. Reid (Simon & Schuster, 1985).
The strength of materials, as it relates to the cube-square law in biological organisms, is discussed in the short and highly readable Why Size Matters: From Bacteria to Blue Whales by John Tyler Bonner (Princeton University Press, 2006).
SUMMARY
In the spirit of continuing a review of the topics addressed here, the reader should consider these fun books employing the question-and-answer approach to cover a wide range of physics for the nonexpert: The Flying Circus of Physics with Answers by Jearl Walker (Wiley, 1977) and Mad About Physics: Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Curiosities by Christopher P. Jargodzski and Franklin Potter (John Wiley & Sons, 2000). In a similar vein, for those no longer intimidated by mathematics, is Back-of-the-E nvelope Physics by Clifford Swartz (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). Those readers eager to put their physics knowledge to use are directed to How Does It Work? by Richard M. Koff (Signet, 1961) and Cy Tymony’s Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2003), which contains instructions for making your own Power Ring!
Finally, some comic-book recommendations. Both DC and Marvel have comprehensive reprint lines, where comics from the Golden Age through the present are collected, frequently on better-quality paper than the originals and at a fraction of their cost if you were to buy the back issues separately today. The Archives series from DC and the Marvel Masterworks volumes reprint Golden and Silver Age comics focusing on a given character or team in a hardcover format. In addition, Marvel has a line of paperback reprints termed Essentials, while DC comics has their Showcase Presents line, where twenty or so issues of Silver Age or later comics featuring a given character or title are reprinted on cheaper paper, in black and white, at a cost of less than a dollar per issue. Those readers whose memories of former favorites have been jogged or those who have developed a new interest will almost certainly find a reprint volume at either your favorite bookstore or your friendly neighborhood comic-book shop. To find the nearest comic-book store, dial 1-888-COMICBOOK or visit http://csls. diamondcomics.com.
There are some collections, however, that should be considered required reading as part of any well-rounded liberal education in costumed superheroes. At the top of the list would be Watchmen (DC Comics, 1986, 1987) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, which is justifiably characterized as the War and Peace of comic books by the film director Terry Gilliam. For legal reasons, the characters in this story are disguised versions of Silver Age heroes originally published by Charlton Comics (such as the Question, Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, etc.) and a familiarity with them is not necessary to enjoy the story. These characters’ adventures are now published by DC Comics, where they are undisturbed by the fate that their doubles met in Moore’s and Gibbons’ epic. Another must-read is Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (DC Comics, 1997), which imagines a possible future fate for Batman. This miniseries is considered by most to be responsible for saving Batman from cancellation or worse—irrelevance—by returning the character to his darker, grim and gritty roots, and has set the tone for various motion-picture versions of the Caped Crusader. Continuing the concept of possible futures of superheroes, Mark Waid’s and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come miniseries (DC Comics, 1998) investigates the interactions between DC Comics’ superpowered heroes and villains and normal civilians. The influence of Marvel Comics superheroes on society, seen from the point of view of a non-superpowered photographer for the Daily Bugle, is explored in Marvels (Marvel Comics, 2004) by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross. One of the best time-travel adventures can be found in the collection Days of Future Past (Marvel Comics, 2004), starring many of the characters from the popular X-Men films, where Kitty Pryde goes back in time to prevent a political assassination that will lead humanity to a dark, dystopian future. Finally, to cleanse the palate of all these deconstructions of the superhero myth, read Darwyn Cooke’s DC: The New Frontier Vols. 1 and 2 (DC Comics, 2004, 2005)—a brilliant reconstruction of the dawn of the Silver Age set in the Cold-War America of the late 1950s when these heroes first appeared.
KEY EQUATIONS
NEWTON’S THREE LAWS OF MOTION
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The basic principles of dynamics, as elucidated by Sir Isaac Newton, state that (1) an object at rest will remain at rest, or if in uniform straight-line motion, will remain in motion, unless acted upon by an external force; (2) if an external force does act on the object, then its change in motion (either speed or direction) is proportional to the outside force, that is F = ma; and (3) forces always come in pairs, commonly expressed as for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
DEFINITION OF ACCELERATION
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Acceleration is defined as the rate of change of velocity—either its magnitude (speed) or its direction, and has units of (distance/time)/ time or distance/(time)2.
WEIGHT = Mg
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A consequence of Newton’s second law (F = ma) when the external force is the gravitational attraction of a planet. The force is then referred to as Weight, and the acceleration due to gravity is relabeled by the letter “g.”
V2 = 2g h
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A description of the velocity v of an object moving under the influence of gravity, whether slowing down as it rises or speeding up as it falls, through a distance h.
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The simple expression, also elucidated by Sir Isaac Newton, for the attractive force between any two point masses. The force is proportional to the product of each mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance that separates them.
g = GM/R2
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A consequence of Newton’s law of gravitational attraction is that the acceleration due to gravity for any large object such as a planet or moon can be expressed as a universal constant G (G = 66.7 trillionth of m3/kg-sec2) multiplied by the object’s mass M, divided by the square of the object’s radius. This expression is correct only for spherically symmetric masses.
gK/gE = ρKRK/ρERE
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By making use of the fact that the mass M of a planet can be written as the product of its density ρ and its volume (4πR3/3 for a sphere), the acceleration due to gravity g = GM/R2 simplifies to 4πGρR, and when taking the ratio of the accelerations due to gravity for two planets, the constants G (4π)/3 cancel out.
FORCE × TIME = (MASS) × (CHANGE IN SPEED)
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A restatement of Newton’s second law (F = ma) where the acceleration is the change in velocity divided by the time over which the external force acts. The mom
entum is defined as the product of the mass and velocity of an object.
PRESSURE = ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE + (DENSITY ×x
ACCELERATION DUE TO GRAVITY × DEPTH)
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The pressure under water increases linearly with depth beneath the surface. At the water’s surface, the pressure is just that of the atmosphere, and the deeper one submerges, the pressure increases as the weight of the fluid above you.
CENTRIPETAL ACCELERATION a = V2/R
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An object moving with velocity v in a circular arc with radius R is characterized by an acceleration for its continually changing direction. The magnitude of this acceleration is v2/R and an external force pointing in toward the center of the circular trajectory of magnitude F = mv2/R must act on the object to account for this changing motion.
WORK = FORCE × DISTANCE
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Work in physics is another expression for energy, and any change in the kinetic energy of an object must result from an external force acting over a given distance. The expression indicates that no work is done when you hold a weight over your head, for while you do supply a force, there is no displacement of the stationary object. This is in conflict with the common usage of the term “work” but is correct physically—once you have increased the object’s potential energy by raising it over your head, there is no additional change in its energy if you maintain it in this raised state indefinitely.
KINETIC ENERGY = (½)mV2; POTENTIAL ENERGY = mgh
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Expressions for the energy associated with motion (kinetic energy = (½)mv2) or for the potential of motion in a gravitational field (potential energy = mgh). Note that the expression for potential energy is the same as the Work done raising an object of weight mg by a height h.
FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
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Essentially a restatement of the principle of conservation of energy, indicating that any change in the internal energy of a system will be the result of any Work done on or by the system, and any heat flow into or out of the system.
SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
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In any process to convert the heat energy that flows from a hot object to a colder object into Work (defined as the product of force times distance), there will inevitably be some loss. That is, one cannot transform 100 percent of the heat flow into productive work. This is related to the entropy of the systems involved, which is a measure of the disorder of their components.
THIRD LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS
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Upon lowering the temperature of a system in equilibrium, which is a measure of the average energy of its components, the entropy also decreases. The entropy of any system is zero if there is only one configuration that it can have, and that state is only realized when the energy of each component is zero—that is, at a temperature of Absolute zero, which can never actually be reached.
COULOMB’S LAW OF ELECTROSTATIC ATTRACTION
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The mathematical expression for the force between two charged objects, indicating that the force is proportional to the product of each object’s charge and divided by the square of the distance separating them. The formula is algebraically identical to Newton’s expression for gravitational force. However, while gravity is always attractive, the force between two charged objects can be attractive if they have opposite signs (positive and negative) or repulsive if they have the same sign (both positive or both negative).
OHM’S LAW V= IR
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Expression relating the voltage V pushing or pulling electrical charges in a conductor of resistance R to the current I (number of charges moving past a given point per unit time). While this expression holds for most metals, not every electronic device obeys this simple linear relationship.
ENERGY= hf
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The quantum hypothesis that states that the change in energy of any atomic system characterized by a frequency f can only occur in steps of magnitude Energy = hf, where h is Planck’s constant, a fundamental constant of nature. When a system lowers or raises its energy by emitting or absorbing light, it must do so through quantized packets of energy termed “photons.”
DEBROGLIE RELATIONSHIP P λ = h
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The motion of any matter having a momentum p is associated with a matter-wave of wavelength λ , where the product of the momentum and the wave’s wavelength is Planck’s constant h.
SCHRÖDINGER EQUATION
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The fundamental wave equation for the “motion” of quantum objects. By knowing the potential V acting on the object, one can solve this equation to obtain the wavefunction ψ that characterizes its behavior. Squaring this wavefunction yields the probability density of finding the object at a given point in space and time, and from this probability density, the average or expected values for any measurable quantity (location, momentum, etc.) can be obtained.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
Page 2 Action # 333 (National Comics. 1966), written by Leo Dorfman, drawn by Al Plastino.
Page 4 World’s Finest # 93 (National Comics, 1958), reprinted in World’s Finest Comics Archives Volume 2 (DC Comics, 2001). Written by Edmond Hamilton, drawn by Dick Sprang.
Page 7 “middle-class sensibilities” Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comics, Roger Sabin (Phaidon Press, 1996).
Page 7 “yellow journalism” The Classic Era of American Comics, Nicky Wright (Contemporary Books, 2000).
Page 7 “firmly established until 1933” Comic Book Culture: An Illustrated History, Ron Goulart (Collectors Press Inc., 2000).
Page 8 “big money in the Depression” The Pulps: Fifty Years of American Pop Culture, compiled and edited by Tony Goodstone (Chelsea House, 1970).
Page 8 “Superman was the brain child” The Illustrated History of Superhero Comics of the Golden Age, Mike Benton (Taylor Publishing Co., 1992); Superman. The Complete History, Les Daniels (Chronicle Books, 1998).
Page 11 “before someone noticed and complained” Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book, Gerard Jones (Basic Books, 2004).
Page 11 “Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 1953 . . .” Seduction of the Innocent, Fredric Wertham (Rinehart Press, 1953).
Page 12 “The U.S. Senate Subcommittee” Seal of Approval, The History of the Comics Code, Amy Kiste Nyberg (University of Mississippi Press, 1998).
Page 12 “Declining sales from the loss” Comic Book Nation, Bradford W. Wright (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
Page 13 The Atom # 21 (National Comics, Oct./Nov. 1965). Written by Gardner Fox, drawn by Gil Kane.
Page 13 “Give us back our eleven days!” Encyclopedia Britannica (William Benton, Chicago) vol. 4, pg. 619 (1968).
Page 14 Brave and the Bold # 28 (National Comics, 1960), reprinted in Justice League of America Archives Volume 1 (DC Comics, 1992). Written by Gardner Fox, drawn by Mike Sekowsky.
Page 14 “Why take the time . . . ?” Man of Two Worlds, My Life in Science Fiction and Comics, Julius Schwartz with Brian M. Thomsen (HarperEntertainment, 2000).
Page 14 “The Hugo Award winner Alfred Bester . . .” Star Light, Star Bright, Alfred Bester (Berkley Publishing Company, 1976).
Page 14 “as reflected in this joke:” Lance Smith, private communication (2001).
Page 16 “physics is not about having memorized . . .” Hellmut Fritszche, private communication (1979).
CHAPTER 1
Page 21 Superman # 1 (National Comics, June 1939), reprinted in Superman Archives Volume 1 (DC Comics, 1989). Written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Joe Shuster.
Page 21 Superman # 330 (DC Comics, Dec. 1978). Written by Martin Pasko and Al Shroeder and drawn by Curt Swan and Frank Chiaramonte.
Page 21 Action Comics # 262 (National Comics, 1960). Written by Robert Bernstein and drawn by Wayne Boring.
Page 23 “In his very first story . . .” Action # 1
(National Comics, June 1938), reprinted in Superman # 1 (National Comics, June 1939), reprinted in Superman Archives Volume 1 (DC Comics, 1989). Written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Joe Shuster.
Page 23 “In the 1940s and 1950s” FN “How a radio-active element” Superman: The Complete History, Les Daniels (Chronicle Books, 1998).
Page 25 “Whether we wish to describe the trajectory . . .” The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Sir Isaac Newton, translated by I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman (University of California Press, 1999); Newton’s Principia for the Common Reader, S. Chandrasekhar (Oxford University Press, 1995).