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Superman Research Paper

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It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! In 1938, Action Comics #1, released the first Superman comic to the public. Superman, also known as Kal El, has shown many different powers since his first debut in 1938. This paper will discuss various topics about four of his major powers and explain why they are all impossible for anyone to achieve in real life. Superman’s four major powers that will be discussed in this paper are X-ray vision, being able to fly, super strength, and invulnerability.
The X-ray was first discovered in 1895 by a German physicist named W.C. Roentgen (“The Discovery”). W.C. Roentgen was working in a lab one day in 1895 and decided to send a high electrical current through a cathode ray filled with special gas. He …show more content…

The idea of being able to fly has been around for many centuries; however the first successful flight was conducted on December 17, 1903 by Orville and Wilbur Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (Graeca). In the real world, there are four forces that are involved during flight. These forces are called lift, gravity, thrust, and drag (“The Physics”). There is a principle that explains how the lift force is produced, called Bernoulli's principle (“The Physics”). Bernoulli’s principle states that “as an object's velocity increases its pressure decreases”. This principle applies to airplanes and birds. “Airplanes and birds have an airfoil shape to each of their wings to produce lift. The airfoil shape produces unequal lengths across the top and bottom of the wing. Air splitting at the front of the wing must rejoin at the back of the wing so as not to create a vacuum. Since the top surface is curved upward and is longer it forces the air to move faster across the top than the bottom. Faster moving fluids create less pressure, so the bottom of the wing creates greater pressure producing lift” (“The Physics”). The definition of a lift force is “a force that acts at a right angle to the relative wind” (Preston). Relative wind is a vector that is exactly opposite of the direction in which you are flying. In order for an airplane to get off of the ground, the airplane must get enough lift to overcome its weight. After the lift …show more content…

In many of the comic books released by Action Comics #1, Superman is depicted holding a massive falling object such as an airplane, or a car using just one or both of his hands. This means that the entire weight of a falling plane or car is balanced on a section of area approximately the size of a human being's hands (Inglis-Arkell). According to Boeing, the average amount of weight for a Boeing 747 airplane that is full of passengers is around 115,000 kilograms (“Aircraft”). The average area of an adult male hand is 0.189 meters (Agnihotri). We are able to determine the force applied in newtons according to the equation Fw=mg. This is because the variable ‘g’ is understood to be a constant 9.81 meters per second squared. If we multiply the mass (m), which in this case is 115,000 kilograms, by the variable ‘g’ in this situation we would find that the force exerted by the airplane expressed in newtons is 1.13 x 10⁶ newtons (Walk). We can determine the amount of pressure exerted using the following mathematical relationship: Pressure equals force divided by area (Chemistry Book). If we plug in 1.13 x 10⁶ newtons in for the force and 0.378 meters in for the area of both of Superman’s hands, we find that the total pressure that Superman has to exert on the airplane is 7.91 x 10⁷ pascals. A pascal is defined as the pressure exerted by a force of one newton acting on an area of one square meter (“Gases”). The world

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