I’ve subscribed to this podcast recently. It’s really good! Kinda like Skepticality, but more in depth on a single particular topic set for that session.

And the range of topics being discussed is pretty broad. From discussing Einstein’s relativity paper (which had tons of trivia on it), to truth in Vitamins, to Religion vs. Evolution vs. Intelligent Design.

One of my favorite topics so far was the Physics of Superheroes, which is actually an introductory to physics book created to put a positive spin on an otherwise boring subject.

An example from the discussion of course was Superman. They went into comic trivia, how Superman actually started as a comic book character. Apparently the “first” character design of Superman never made him as invincible as he is thought to be, nor could he fly. Lets focus on the flying.

The original description of being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound was correct… think something like the Hulk. It’s common knowledge nowadays that because his DNA is configured for life in the planet Krypton, that he exhibited superhuman traits when on earth. They didn’t explain each trait like the x-ray vision, or the eye beam… etc. etc. as anything connected to it, but they did say that somewhere along the way, when the character turned to a multi-million dollar franchise, they conveniently made him more powerful than ever by attributing his powers to our yellow sun.

Anyways, enough of the trivia. Now how is this applied to the teaching of physics, where superheroes obviously defy such laws? Each superhero is granted one miracle trait which exempts him from such laws, but then must adhere to the laws of nature beyond that trait. In the case of Superman, his “limited” superhuman ability was considered… and was attributed to his body’s configuration for Krypton’s high-gravity (which will be discussed).

Simply put, they started tried to explain the “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” descriptor. The limit of which they said was approximately a 20-30 stories (I guess that was more trivia for us). So using Newton’s laws of Motion and gravitation, they were able to calculate how fast a mass such as his needed in relation to the gravity, and ultimately how much downward force his legs needed to apply to the earth (2nd law) for him to achieve the feat (3rd law). This turned out to be a couple of thousand pounds… pretty buff!

Using the same data, then also calculated Krypton’s gravity compared to earths (I think it was something like 15 times) – and in turn, tried to calculate what type of planetary core was required to “build” such a planet.

The time I knew that I was going to love the Podcast was when they said that Krypton needed a core similar to neutron-star… and hence explains why the said planet exploded hahahahahaha… and it all comes full circle ;)

After which I just kept on listening to the other topics and loved every one of them.