If you wake up one morning with 1,000 times the strength you had the night before, how will you handle delicate day-to-day tasks? Everything must seem so fragile to you since the scale of your strength has expanded one thousand times. You'd have to be very careful when you're shaking someone's hand so you don't end up breaking their bones or crushing everyone you hug. And using a fork to pick up a piece of broccoli from a Styrofoam plate without driving the fork through the plate is going to be as difficult as brain surgery. Say the day comes and you get the chance to save a damsel in distress falling from a helicopter. So, you hold out your arms, hoping to catch her. Seconds later, you will find yourself holding her lifeless body. What happened? Well, pressure is force divided by area. The smaller the area, the bigger the pressure. This is why we can lift heavy objects without breaking our skin, but a tiny needle can make us bleed with just a little poke. The pressure that will be exerted on her body can be calculated by force divided by the area on the top of your arms that comes in contact with her. It doesn't matter if your arms are strong enough to catch her body without breaking your bones. Her spine is not strong enough to be caught by you without being damaged. Even if you rip off the nearest door to provide a bigger area to catch her with, you still wouldn't be able to save her anyway. Remember, it's not the fall that kills her, but the sudden stop at the bottom. Let's say she's falling from a 32 story building, about 300 feet, and you are 6 feet tall, maybe 10 feet on your tippy-toes, with your arms above your head holding a door, in hopes of distributing the pressure across a larger surface area, but all you're doing is essentially moving the ground up by 10 feet. So, she's now falling from 290 feet, instead of 300 feet, reaching the speed of 173 feet per second just before impact, not counting air resistance. It's the equivalent of crashing at 94 miles per hour into a wall with a door in front of it. The only thing that could save her is flying. But that power comes with its own host of scientific issues. If you could fly, what you must do is fly up to her, start flying down at the speed she is falling, hold on to her, then gradually slow down until you come to a complete stop. This process requires a lot of cushion space between the point she starts falling and the ground. Every second you waste on changing into your superhero costume and flying up to her height, her head is getting that much closer to the pavement! If she's falling from a high place, and you can't get to her until she's only a few feet above the ground, there's really nothing you can do other than magically turn the pavement into marshmellow to allow her enough time to slowly come to a stop. Then, break out the chocolate and graham crackers and you've got s'mores. Mmmm, delicious! Now, which superpower physics lesson will you explore next? Shifting body size and content, super speed, flight, super strength, immortality, and invisibility.
Kada biste se jednog jutra probudili sa snagom 1000 puta većom nego prethodne noći, kako biste se snalazili sa delikatnim svakodnevnim radnjama? Mora da vam se sve čini krhkim pošto se vaša snaga uvećala za hiljadu puta. Morali biste da budete veoma pažljivi kada se s nekim rukujete kako im ne biste polomili sve kosti ili smrvili svakog koga zagrlite. Nabadanje komada brokolija viljuškom sa plastičnog tanjira a da ne probijete tanjir viljuškom biće komplikovano kao operacija na mozgu. Recimo da taj dan dođe i imate priliku da spasite damu u nevolji koja pada iz helikoptera. Tako ispružite svoje ruke nadajući se da ćete je uhvatiti. Nakon nekoliko sekundi, zatičete sebe kako držite njeno beživotno telo. Šta se desilo? Pa, pritisak je sila podeljena sa površinom. Što je manja površina, to je veći pritisak. Zato možemo da podižemo teške predmete a da ne probijemo kožu, ali zbog malene igle prokrvarimo uz samo mali ubod. Pritisak koji će biti ispoljen na njeno telo može se izračunati tako što se sila podeli sa površinom na vrhu vaših ruku koja dolazi u kontakt s njom. Nije bitno da li su vam ruke dovoljno jake da uhvate njeno telo, a da vam se kosti ne polome. Njena kičma nije dovoljno jaka da je vi uhvatite a ne oštetite. Čak i kada biste otkinuli najbliža vrata da pružite veću površinu s kojom biste je uhvatili, svejedno ne biste mogli da je spasite. Zapamtite, ne ubija je pad, već naglo zaustavljanje na kraju. Recimo da padne sa zgrade od 32 sprata, oko 90 metara, a visoki ste 180cm, možda 3 metra kada se ispružite s rukama iznad glave koje drže vrata, nadajući se da ćete rasporediti pritisak preko veće površine ali vi zapravo samo pomerate tlo za 3 metra. Dakle, ona sada pada 87 umesto 90 metara i dostiže brzinu od 53 metra u sekundi pred sami udarac, ne računajući otpor vazduha. To je jednako sudaru pri 150 kilometara na čas, u zid koji ispred sebe ima vrata. Jedina stvar koja može da je spasi je letenje. Ali ta moć dolazi sa sopstvenom hrpom naučnih problema. Kada biste mogli da letite, morate da doletite do nje, počnete da letite brzinom kojom ona pada, uhvatite je, onda postepeno usporite dok se potpuno ne zaustavite. Ovaj proces zahteva dosta slobodnog prostora između tačke kada počne da pada i udarca o tlo. Svaki sekund koji protraćite presvačeći se u svoj kostim superheroja i leteći do njene visine, njena glava je sve bliža udarcu o beton! Ako pada sa visokog mesta i ne možete doći do nje dok nije samo nekoliko metara pred tlom, ne postoji ništa što možete da uradite osim da beton magično pretvorite u beli slez kako bi ona imala dovoljno vremena da se polako zaustavi. Onda izvadite čokoladu i krekere i imate poslasticu. Mmm, ukusno! Sada, koju ćete lekciju o supermoćima iz fizike istražiti nakon ove? Menjanje veličine i sadržaja tela, superbrzina, let, nadljudska snaga, besmrtnost ili nevidljivost.