Supervillain Science: Superman
Posted by Science Oxford on October 13, 2009 | comments
This is part 3 of our Supervillain Science series. We’re glad all you aspiring supervillains are sticking with this introductory course in Eeevil!
Read on to learn how to apply science and scientific thinking to the thorny problem of how to take over the world. As we have said before, the actual taking over of the world is simple, it’s always just one thing that gets in our way – Superheroes.
So far we have been looking at how to defeat specific super heroes.
Now this is all well and good, but there are very many different heroes out there that you’ll need to defeat. So you’ll need to kit yourself out with some basic super powers of your very own. The two most basic are flight and strength.
But how to achieve them without getting bitten by anything gross, or being born on some stupid alien planet?
Answer = SCIENCE!
So lets say we want to be as strong as Superman, what possible mechanism could we use? Well, I shall propose that we use a piece of technology that has been in use for thousands of years – the pulley.
Pulleys work by spreading out the amount of force needed to lift, say, a weight.
In the short video below you will see how pulleys, especially using the multiplying effect, can be used to lift relatively heavy weights with minimal effort.
If we kept introducing more pulleys into the system you would see that the force at the other end of the system is divided amongst each pulley. This is referred to as having a mechanical advantage.
So, to be as strong as Superman, how many pulleys will he need? The first question is exactly how strong is Superman?
Well, we have here a reference to him being able to hold 200 quintillion tons. This is approx 1.8 x 10^23 kg. So if we can exert that much force, we can at the very least hold Superman still (no mean feat, considering we’re referring to a person who in his youth once sneezed so hard he destroyed a solar system).
Now, the equation to figure out the mechanical advantage (so, how many pulleys we would need) looks like this:
Mechanical advantage = output force / input force
So we want to output a force of 1.8 x 10^23 kg, while using a force of, say, 5kg. So the mechaincal advantage which we need works out to be….3.5 x 10^23. So we would need 3.5 x 10^23 + 1 pulleys in order to hold superman in place. Assuming that each pulley takes up an average of 10cm, we would need a pulley system which could stretch 10^15 times around the earth. Which I leave as an exercise for you.
But how can we achieve flight? It’s a fairly standard super power – almost any kind of radiation, mutation, alien, magical ring or shady government sponsored experiment grants this power. So it mustn’t be that hard to get.
Now gravity is a surprisingly weak force. Think about it, on your fridge a home you might have a ‘fridge magnet’. These teeny, tiny little magnets have enough oomph in them to resist the force exerted by our entire planet. So could we use this to make us fly?
Well, let’s see. Take a look at the video below using the device this lady can imbue this object with LIFE! She is in full control of this flying demon – it goes where she wants it to:
Now, is this some kind of magic? Heck no – this is SCIENCE! Our brain juices are what we use, not some random genetic happenstance!
The device in this video is a miniature version of something called a Van de Graff generator.
So, if we could get a large enough Van de Graff generator, we could technically imbue ourselves with charge, enough to repel the force of gravity!
What do you think?