Somewhere in a parallel universe, a mild-mannered physics
professor named Jim Kakalios dons a cape and tights
to battle the forces of evil.
In our own dimension, Kakalios—an unabashed comic
book enthusiast—teaches physics with the zest of
a costumed crimefighter, illustrating his points with
examples from the annals of superhero history.
Last fall the superheroes moved to the head of his
class. In an imaginative new freshman seminar, Kakalios
uses concepts and characters from comic books to explore
basic principles of physics, chemistry, and biology.
The course—Everything I Know About Science I Learned
from Reading Comic Books—attracted students from
a wide variety of disciplines.
It's a fitting venture for Kakalios, whose lifelong
love of comic books helped cultivate his passion for
science.
"As a kid, comic books helped fuel my curiosity,” he
recalls. In one story, his favorite hero, The Flash,
lost his ability to avoid air resistance and friction.
“It made me aware [that], aside from the silly notion
of superpowers, there were all sorts of secondary issues
associated with the ability to run superfast that I
hadn't considered."
Convinced that comics could help make science more
accessible and appealing to students of any age, Kakalios
toyed for years with the notion of creating a class
on the science of superheroes.
Comic books made their first foray into his classroom
in 1993, when he posed a question about the death of
Spider-Man's girlfriend, Gwen Stacey, on an introductory
physics exam.
Stacey's death was a seminal event in comics, says
Kakalios. Hurled from the top of the George Washington
Bridge by the evil Green Goblin, she died in Spider-Man's
web as he tried to save her. Although she appeared to
have suffered a broken neck when she hit the web, the
series' writers later attributed her death to the “shock
of the fall,” an explanation that left many readers—including
Kakalios—unsatisfied.
Twenty years after the story first appeared, Kakalios
and his physics course settled the matter once and for
all. “Gwen Stacey's fall is basically a standard problem
that we would ask on an exam: If you fall 90 meters
with an initial velocity of zero, how fast are you going
at the bottom?"
The answer he calculated removed any doubt about the
cause of Stacey's death: She was falling at roughly
95 miles per hour when she hit the web; the impact on
her body would have been 10 to 20 times the force of
gravity. “That proved—mathematically at least—that
Gwen Stacey died of a neck snap when Spider-Man caught
her in his webbing."
The problem—a favorite among students—soon
earned Kakalios wider notoriety in the comic book world.
In 1997, a comic book magazine called Wizard
published an issue devoted to resolving longstanding
comic book questions. Kakalios wrote to the editor,
University alumnus Jim McLauchlin, to offer his explanation
of Stacey's death. McLauchlin published the letter,
and Kakalios earned a spot as Wizard's “resident
rocket scientist."
In the new seminar, Kakalios and a dozen students tackled
a variety of super-problems like shape-shifting and
invisibility. Shrinking, for example, was fraught with
difficulties. If the laws of physics applied, insect-sized
Ant-Man would become deaf and speak with a hypersonic
voice because his eardrums and vocal cords would shrink
to submillimeter sizes. Typical air currents would easily
blow him across the room, and a drop of water would
double his weight, immobilizing him like a real ant.
In addition to identifying such scientific bloopers,
the class examined cases in which comic creators got
the science right.
"Take Superman,” says Kakalios. “In his very first
year, he could only leap, not fly. His skin was tough,
he had great strength, all because [his home planet]
Krypton had larger gravity than Earth.” Using the hero's
ability “to leap over tall buildings in a single bound”
as a benchmark, the class calculated that Krypton's
gravity would have to have been six to eight times that
of Earth.
That means Krypton had to be either six times larger
or six times denser than Earth. Assuming that normal
matter on Krypton obeys the laws of physics, the planet
could not be six times denser than Earth. “So Krypton
had to be six times larger,” explains Kakalios. “But
any planet that much larger than Earth would have to
be a gas giant like Jupiter. Because Krypton had a solid
crust supporting buildings and cities, the only other
explanation for its increased gravity would be a super-dense—and
unstable—material like a neutron star in its core.
And that would explain why Krypton exploded.
"Of course, [Superman's creators] didn't know it at
the time. They got the science right by accident,” says
Kakalios.
The Man of Steel, introduced in 1938, was an anomaly
among Golden Age heroes, says Kakalios. “Most of the
characters introduced in the 1930s and 1940s got their
powers through magic or mysticism,” he says. As stories
were retold for subsequent generations, many characters
were updated to reflect advances in science and technology.
"For example, the original Green Lantern (introduced
in 1940) had a magic lantern and a power ring that was
vulnerable to wood. In the 1960s, Green Lantern got
a scientific makeover.” His powers were similar, but
there was now a quasi-scientific explanation for his
abilities: The lantern was extraterrestrial, and an
impurity in his ring now made the Green Lantern vulnerable
to the color yellow.
Characters created in the 1950s and 1960s often owed
their powers to radiation or mutation. When Spider-Man
(Peter Parker) was introduced in 1962, he owed his extraordinary
abilities to the bite of a radioactive spider. When
his origin was retold in the 1990s, the science was
updated to reflect current trends: Parker‰s powers now
result from the bite of a genetically engineered spider.
Although contemporary comic books are more grounded
in science than they used to be, “they still require
a willful suspension of disbelief,” says Kakalios. “The
best ones require only one 'miracle'—one thing
you have to buy into to make the hero plausible—and
the rest should follow."
One of Kakalios' favorite stories acknowledges this
leap of faith. “There's a panel in which The Atom and
another character have shrunk to submolecular size,
and they're sitting on an electron,” he recalls with
a grin. “The Atom's companion says, 'We're smaller than
an oxygen molecule. How are we breathing?' The Atom
replies, 'I've never really figured that out.'"
But the course isn’t about debunking various characters
or storylines, Kakalios explains. The analysis is all
part of the fun.
"The most important thing is getting the students to
ask the right kinds of questions,” he says. “If a character
has wings on her back, what important physical forces
and issues do we need to consider if she's going to
use them to fly? What kind of wingspan and muscle structure
would that require? Hopefully, pointing out issues like
that will help them think critically in other situations."
As a final project, each student selected a favorite
comic book superhero and examined the scientific basis
of the character's abilities. The analyses covered a
wide range of genres, from superheroes to “The
Simpsons.”
One of Kakalios' personal favorites—the elastic
Mr. Fantastic—could serve as a role model for
his students. “Reed Richards [Mr. Fantastic] had these
powers that allowed him to stretch and assume different
shapes, but he often used his intellect [to defeat the
villain]. He was the smartest man in the Marvel Comics
Universe, and he showed that being intelligent could
be cool and useful."
But when Mr. Fantastic's exploits sometimes defy explanation,
even Kakalios the professor can set aside his scientific
proclivities.
"It's escapist fiction, so I just turn off that part
of my brain and enjoy the stories on their own terms,”
he says.
Super scholar:
Professor Jim Kakalios and his collection of costumed
crimefighters.
