“Superman’s Super Boo-Boos” (Action Comics # 333)
Superman: The Movie (film)
supernova
surface
fracturing or tearing
friction and
surface tension of water
surfactant
Swamp Thing (DC Comics character)
Swimming
tachyons
Tales from the Crypt
Tales of Suspense
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales of Suspense ,
Tales to Astonish
Tales to Astonish ,
Tales to Astonish ,
Tales to Astonish ,
Tales to Astonish ,
Tales to Astonish ,
Tales to Astonish ,
Tales to Astonish ,
Tales to Astonish ,
Tarzan
Taxol (anticancer drug)
telepathy
telephone
television
reverse
temperature
atmospheric, and weather
Kelvin absolute scale
kinetic energy and
light emitted by hot objects and
phase transitions and
quantitative concept of
zero entropy and
tensile strength
tension, pendulum and
“Tests” (Spider-M an Unlimited # 2)
The Top (Roscoe Dillon)
theory, scientific
thermal conductivity
thermal convection rolls
thermal imaging
thermodynamics
thermodynamics, laws of
First
Second
Third
thermoresponsive materials
Thing (Ben Grimm)
Thomas, Roy
Thompson, Benjamin
Thompson’Arcy
Thor, Mighty
hammer travel of
throwing
thunderstorm
time. See also space-time
impulse and momentum and
power and
Special Theory of Relativity and
Time Pool
Timely Comics. See Marvel Comics
time travel
titanium alloys
Titanium Man (Iron Man foe)
tornadoes
torque
axis of rotation and
center of mass and
defined
unbalanced
Toyman (Superman foe)
transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
transistors
defined
invention of
top-hat
“Trapped by the Protector” (Ant-Man)
Trevor, Steve (Wonder Woman’s friend)
tunneling phenomena
turbine
turbulence
Ultimates ,
Ultimates ,
Ultimates,
ultraviolet catastrophe
ultraviolet light (UV)
UV glasses and
Ultron (Avengers foe)
Uncanny X-Men, The
Uncle Ben (Spider-Man’s relative)
“Unified Field Theory, The” (West Coast Avengers)
U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency
universe
Big Bang and
elemental mass in
missing mass of
parallel (multiverse)
Unknown
uranium
vacuum
vacuum tubes
van der Waals force
Vault of Horror, The
Veidt, Adrian (Watchmen character)
Velcro, invention of
velocity. See also acceleration; deceleration
braking time and
density and
escape
friction and drag and
impulse and momentum and
initial
shortening of lengths and
Vibranium
Vietnam War
Vinci, Leonardo da
violin string analogy, and electron’s discrete energy levels
viscosity
Vision (Avenger superhero)
vision. See also night-vision goggles
Ant Man and
Aquaman and
Atom and
night-vision goggles and
X-ray
vocal cords
voltage
voltage difference
volume
cube-square law and
of sphere
vortices
dolphins and golf balls and
water-strider and
Vulture (Spider-Man foe)
Waid, Mark
Warner Bros.
warp speed
Wasp (Janet Van Dyne)
costumes of
shrinking of
waste energies
waste heat
Watchmen (film)
Watchmen (Moore and Gibbons)
water
breathing under
density of
electricity and
hard vs. heavy
height or sea level of
running on surface of
surface tension of
waves in
water-air interface
water analogy
electric current and
transistors and
water molecules
diamagnetic
phase transitions and
V-shape of, and snow
water pressure
swimming speed and
water vapor, humidity and
Watson, Mary Jane (Spider-Man friend)
Watt (unit of power)
Watt, James
wave function, for electron
wavelength
matter-wave
electromagnetic waves
sound wave
wavelike nature of matter. See also matter-waves
Weak force
weather
Weather Wizard (Mark Mardon)
webbing
real spider’s
Spider-Man and
weight. See also cube-square law; mass
Atom’s ability to shrink size independently of
friction and
mass vs.
Superman’s, on Krypton
weightlessness
Wein, Len
Weird Science-Fantasy
Weird Tales
Weisinger, Mort
Wertham, Dr. Frederic
West, Iris (Flash’s girlfriend)
West, T.H. (physics professor)
West Coast Avengers
West Coast Avengers #42
What is Relativity? (Landau and Romer)
Wheeler Nicholson, Malcolm
Whirlwind (Dave Cannon, Human Top)
Wieringo, Mike
Wildcat
Wildenberg, Harry
wind
wind power
Wingless Wizard (Fantastic Four foe), antigravity discs of
wireless technology
wires
coil, generation of electrical current and
electrical current and
malleability of metal and
resistance of, and light
shape memory and
telephone
Wizard magazine
Wolverine (Logan)
Wonder Woman ,
Wonder Woman
bullet-deflecting bracelets of
Golden vs. Silver Age
moon on string and
Wong-Chu (Iron Man foe)
Work
conservation of energy and
defined, vs. torque
thermodynamics and
World’s Finest ,
World’s Finest ,
World War II,
wormholes
X-Men
X-Men ,
X-Men ,
X-Men ,
X-Men ,
X-Men ,
X-Men 2: X-men United (film)
X rays
X ray vision
glasses for
Yeager, Col. Chuck
Yellowjacket (Henry Pym). See also Ant-Man; Giant-Man
yellow journalism
Yellow Kid
yew tree, stress/strain properties of
Yinsen, Professor (Iron Man ally)
Zantanna
zero degrees Kelvin
zero entropy systems
zone of force
Zook (J’onn J’onnz sidekick)
Zwicky, Fritz
Zzzax (Avenger foe)
Figure 31: Photograph by Francis Simon, courtesy of AIP Emilo Segre Visual Archives, Francis Simon Collection.
The copyrighted DC Comics and Marvel illustrations in this book are reproduced for commentary, critical, scientific and scholarly purposes. The copyright dates adjacent to the illustrations are the dates printed in the comics in which the illustrations were first published.
The copyrights and trademarks in Superman, Flash, Weather Wizard, Aquaman, Rulers of Appellax, the Atom, Superboy, Golden Age Flash, Ray Palmer, Victor Danning, John Carr, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, and related logos and indicia are owned by DC Comics Inc.
The copyrights and trademarks in Spider-Man, Gwen Stacy, Green Goblin, Ant-Man, Wasp, Porcupine, Iceman, Storm, Electro, Magneto, Sub-Mariner, Angel, Kitty Pryde, Whirlwind, White Queen, Sebastian Shaw, Iron Man, and related logos and indicia are owned by Marvel Entertainment Group Inc.
1 To this end, Lex Luthor publicly came to Superman’s aid on several occasions, with the goal of making Superman doubt his judgment regarding Luthor’s intentions. So committed was Luthor to this plan that he even directly saved Superman’s life when he was threatened by another crook wielding a Kryptonian sword capable of killing him. You might think that it would be simpler at this point to abandon his plan to “gaslight” Superman and just let the other crook kill him and be done with it, but who can truly understand the thought processes of a criminal mastermind like Lex Luthor?
2 The concept of using words and drawings to tell a story is more than five hundred years old. There are examples of woodcut “broadsheets” from the Middle Ages that use paneled borders, speedlines, and word balloons.
3 Water is characterized as “heavy” when the two hydrogen atoms in H2O each have an extra neutron, while water with a large mineral content is termed “hard.” Fortunately for the Golden Age Flash, water softeners were not common in the 1940s.
4 Hence, an effective anti-Green Lantern weapon, regardless of the period, would be a yellow, wooden baseball bat.
5 The accumulated body of knowledge about the world is now so vast that physicists are able to make continued progress only by specializing in either experimental or theoretical research. Experimentalists work in laboratories and carry out measurements, while theoreticians perform calculations and computer simulations. I am an experimentalist, while Stephen Hawking is a theorist (the differences begin there). One of the last physicists who truly excelled at both experimental and theoretical research was Enrico Fermi.
6 As a father myself, I can certainly empathize with Jor-El. Many are the times I’ve been tempted to put my own kids in a rocket ship and send them off into deep space.
7 Superman first flew in his cartoon adventures, animated by the Fleischer Studios and then Famous Studios from 1941 to 1943. It took too long and was too costly to animate Superman constantly crouching and leaping, and the animators petitioned to allow Superman to just fly. Slowly and somewhat inconsistently, this power migrated over to the comic book adventures of the Man of Tomorrow.
8 This last power was introduced to explain why only a simple pair of eyeglasses created such a perfect disguise that no one ever realized that mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent and the world-famous Superman were the same person. As described in Superman # 330, Superman apparently subconsciously hypnotizes everyone who sees him into believing that his face is markedly different from Clark Kent’s.
9 How a radioactive element from his native planet would affect Superman so strongly, while he remained immune to radioactive isotopes found on Earth, is more an issue of contract negotiations than physical plausibility. Kryptonite was first introduced in the radio serial Adventures of Superman in 1943, or so the story goes, when the overworked radio actor portraying the Man of Steel wanted a vacation. The radio scriptwriters created Superman’s mineral nemesis so that another actor could portray the stricken superhero by groaning into the microphone. Several years later, the comic-book writers adopted and adapted this creative device, and a rainbow of Kryptonite (green, red, gold, silver, and others) with a broad range of effects on Superman was introduced into the comic-book universe.
10 You never forget your first car!
11 The Hulk is brighter than everyone gives him credit for (his alter ego is a physicist, after all).
12 Experts will argue, correctly, that this value for the time spent pushing against the ground is too long, and should be at least ten times smaller. We will address this point in the next chapter. Have patience, Fearless Reader!
13 This is the unbalanced force across the diameter of a planet arising from one side being closer to the sun than the other.
14 Those who were involved in publishing DC and Marvel comics at the time deny that such a golf game ever took place. Nevertheless, because this story is considered the fountainhead of Marvel Comics by so many fans, it has become the accepted legend, regardless of whether it has any factual basis.
15 In the 2002 motion picture Spider-Man, the genetically engineered superspider bite also gave Peter the ability to shoot organic webbing from ducts in his wrists. This freed the filmmakers from having to explain why teenager Peter Parker was able to invent and manufacture a revolutionary adhesive webbing, yet persistently remained in debt.
16 Though the bridge as drawn is clearly the Brooklyn Bridge, it is identified in the story as the George Washington Bridge. In 2004 the editor of this issue, Stan Lee, accepted responsibility (it comes with great power, after all) for the error. In subsequent reprints the bridge is referred to as the Brooklyn Bridge.
17 The Flash!
18 A freak electrochemical accident of this nature would never be seen again—until Flash Comics # 110, when another lightning bolt splashed young Wally West with identical chemicals, endowing him with superspeed as well. Wally then began his career as a junior crimefighter, under the imaginative name Kid Flash.
19 There are important exceptions to this general principle that viscosity increases with speed, such as with tomato ketchup. When rapidly stressed, the viscosity of ketchup decreases, while as just argued, a sharp shock to water increases its resistance to flow. This is why fast, hard raps to the bottom of a ketchup bottle momentarily reduce its viscosity and speed up its egress from the bottle.
20 This “negative energy” is associated with squeezed quantum states, and is beyond the scope of this book. And no, your brother in-law cannot be considered a vast, untapped source of negative energy.
21 He rarely made use of this ability. Noteworthy is More Fun Comics # 106, where a darkly inked page invites the reader to “look at things not through Aquaman’s dark-adapted eyes, but through our own. On the ocean floor, all is blackness. But here and there, quivering, gleaming streaks of phosphorescence knife through the gloom. . . .”
22 It’s pronounced Sub-Mariner, not Submarine-er, by the way. Prince Namor’s creator, Bill Everett, joined the merchant marines at age fifteen (and left two years after) and presumably was very familiar with thi
s synonym for seamen. His half-human/ half-Atlantean hero, capable of breathing underwater, is best described as a sub merged mariner. Imperius Rex!
23 A long, typically carbon-based molecule is called a “polymer” because it contains many (poly) similar chemical structures (called “mers” from the Greek “meros” meaning “part”) along its chain.
24 Sorry.
25 In a 2008 issue of the JLA Classified, the Atom, a size-reducing superhero in the DC comic universe, is shown deliberately increasing his size when he must walk across a room, in order to increase his stride and reduce the number of steps he must take. Ant Man had only one size he could shrink to, and consequently employed ants as transportation.
26 When concerned about fracturing or tearing a surface, we must consider the force and the area over which it is applied. When attempting to cross a barely frozen lake that has only a very thin layer of ice on its surface, you are more likely to successfully get across wearing snowshoes than stiletto high heels. Your weight is the same regardless of footwear, but the higher pressure in the high heels will lead to an icy dunking.
27 What?
28 Flash Fact: An object will escape the Earth’s gravitational field if launched with a speed of seven miles a second!
29 Sorry.
30 Only in Silver Age comic books would a serious criminal go by the name “Toughy.”
31 The periodic harmonic motion of a swinging pendulum is one of the cor nerstones of much of the theoretical modeling one does in physics. When attempting to describe some complicated natural phenomenon, we so often begin by invoking a simple pendulum that one is tempted to paraphrase Yogi Berra and state that 90 percent of physics is “simple harmonic motion” and the other half is the “random walk.”
32 We’ll have more to say about the Atom and his shrinking ability in Chapter 13.
33 The intensity of the pressure wave from a sonic boom decreases with distance from the source. Consequently, as long as a supersonic jet stays well above street level, a similar concern over building damage can be avoided.
The Physics of Superheroes: Spectacular Second Edition Page 47
