tootall wrote:There's a new commercial out that indicates that we humans can move at 268 miles per hour- and thereby dodge fastballs. Soooo......
Don´t rely too completely on "official numbers", i recall when back in school, we did a little science project, built a little gadget to test reaction times, calibrated very precisely down to milliseconds.
I consistently managed to react faster than humans are supposed to be capable of, hard limit, while one other was just above that limit, further showing that the stated "hard limit" known at the time was rubbish, and also that the probability for reaction times was equally incorrect, as otherwise, having 2 people out of 30 even be close to that limit, the odds are beyond ridiculous for that.
(many years later came the "amazing" and "shocking" news that a small percentage of people had nerves that were "hypered up", very good for fast reaction times and promoting chances of high IQ, not so great in regards to pain)
tootall wrote:My math skills seem to indicate that as in the vicinity of 300 plus ft per second. Slow handgun rounds move at about 850.
Given Merlin's 10 times normal strength and speed--- Does that mean that if he could see the bullet coming at Cayleb ---he could stop it? How about a small cannon ball?
First of all, unless he has steelhard skin as well, any bullet will still be HIGHLY likely to tear into his hand(or whatever he uses).
It´s not about strength or force, it´s about force per size.
Strength and speed are useless if the bullet still goes through his hand. Extreme precision is far more useful than strength for a theoretical "swatting the bullet".
Normal human strength is perfectly enough for it if you can match the speed, timing and precision enough. Which of course noone can realistically do. Even with superhyped reaction times and movement, very unlikely even if it might get into the realm of theoretically possible. Less likely than surviving a fall from 8000m or above. Which has actually happened more than once(a gunner on a B-17 during WWII, a flight attendant in the 50s or 60s and IIRC at least one more i can´t recall).
Second, if you want to dodge someone shooting at you, you do NOT dodge the bullet, that´s effectively impossible, you dodge the aim of the one shooting, something which is perfectly possible even if severely difficult.