Blogs / Cosmic Variance

So you might have noticed that I’ve read the odd comic or two. You may also have noticed that I think about physics from time to time. So you’d guess therefore that if I saw this post about a book on physics and comics over at Caolionn’s QuantumDiaries blog, I’d not be able to resist commenting, and then when the author showed up and commented as well, and pointed me to the website, and I saw the book’s table of contents…..how could I not blog about it?!

Table of contents:

Section 1—Mechanics
1. Up, Up, and Away—Forces and Motion
2. Deconstructing Krypton—Newton’s Law of Gravity
3. The Day Gwen Stacy Died—Impulse and Momentum
4. Can He Swing from a Thread?—Centripetal Acceleration
5. Flash Facts—Friction, Drag, and Sound
6. Like a Flash of Lightning—Special Relativity
7. If This Be My Density—Properties of Matter
8. Can Ant-Man Punch His Way Out of a Paper Bag?—Torque and Rotation
9. Is Ant-Man Deaf, Dumb, and Blind?—Simple Harmonic Motion
10. Does Size Matter?—The Cube-Square Law
Section 2—Energy—Heat and Light
11. The Central City Diet plan—Conservation of Energy
12. The Case of the Missing Work—The Three Laws of Thermodynamics
13. Mutant Meteorology—Conduction and Convection
14. How The Monstrous Menace of the Mysterious Melter
Makes Dinner Preparation a Breeze—Phase Transitions
15. Electro’s Clinging Ways—Electrostatics
16. Superman Schools Spider-Man—Electrical Currents
17. How Electro Becomes Magneto When He Runs—Ampere’s Law
18. How Magneto Becomes Electro When He Runs—Magnetism and Faraday’s Law
19. Electro and Magneto Do the Wave—Electromagnetism and Light
Section 3—Modern Physics
20. Journey into the Microverse—Atomic Physics
21. Not a Dream! Not a Hoax! Not an Imaginary Tale!—Quantum Mechanics
22. Through a Wall Lightly—Tunneling Phenomena
23. Sock It to Shellhead—Solid-State Physics
Section 4—What Have We Learned?
24. Me Am Bizarro!—Superhero Bloopers

Comment from the author (extract, from Caolionn’s blog):

Actually, its a real physics book, written for the general public, which starts with Isaac Newton and goes all the way through a standard undergraduate curriculum up through how a transistor works. There are simple algebraic equations throughout. It is NOT a textbook, but again, a general audience book.

The sneaky aspect is that there’s not a single inclined plane or pulley in sight. Rather, ALL the examples come from comic books, and in particular, those cases where they get their physics right.

So, granting a one-time miracle exception – if you were as strong as Superman, how much force would it take to leap a tall building in a single bound? If your strong legs resulted from your home planet having a larger gravity than Earth’s – what is the minimum excess gravity of your planet? Now, how would you construct a planet with this excess gravity? You can do it – but it’s hard to keep it from exploding!

Answering these questions takes you through Newton’s laws of motion and of gravitational attraction.

If like me, you teach Electromagnetism and Special Relativity (for example) and if like me you grew up reading Spiderman and X-Men comics (for example), you’ll appreciate just how excellent the chapter headings 17 – 19 are!!

I’d like to see this book, since if it is as good as the table of contents suggests, it’ll be a blast to read, and would be a good one to recommend to some (especially younger) readers. Hmm, maybe I’ll wait a while in case the author sends me a complimentary review copy (ahem!)…

-cvj