Superhero remedial physics

fallsfromtrees wrote:Mythbusters did a show on this. Hung a pig carcass on a string and shot at it with everything from a 9mm pistol to a 50 cal machine gun. Virtually no motion at all with any of them.

Ye-es and if you check just a few posts above you fill find that exact piece of information mentioned. I even replied to it.

Tenshinai wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:Mythbusters did a show on this. Hung a pig carcass on a string and shot at it with everything from a 9mm pistol to a 50 cal machine gun. Virtually no motion at all with any of them.

Ye-es and if you check just a few posts above you fill find that exact piece of information mentioned. I even replied to it.

Your right - and to make it worse, I was the person who posted it. Getting old means that the memory is one of the first things to go.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Your right - and to make it worse, I was the person who posted it. Getting old means that the memory is one of the first things to go.

"Well, there's three things that go out on ya. The first one is yer vision, and the second one is yer memory."
"What's the third thing?"
"What third thing?"

Imaginos1892 wrote:In the first Hulk movie, there is a scene where he grabs an M-1 Abrams tank by its cannon barrel, whirls it around and throws it about half a mile.

I don't care how strong he is, he's not heavy enough to do that with a 70 ton tank.

Another common mistake is allowing a character to apply super strength to a very small spot on some ordinary object without tearing it apart. Yanking off a car door is unlikely; you'd probably get just the handle and a bit of sheet metal.

How can the Flash get enough traction to overcome air resistance, or change direction? Why doesn't a shockwave and sonic boom destroy everything within 50 meters of his path?
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Irony: falling off a chair while putting up an OSHA workplace safety notice.

On the Hulk grabbing the barrel. Wouldn't there be a weak point where the cannon separated from the main tank?
Even if it was a new unknown alloy, something's got to give. P.S. Bizzaro (and I suppose others like Simon Grundy)also has thrown tanks the same way.

TN4994 wrote:On the Hulk grabbing the barrel. Wouldn't there be a weak point where the cannon separated from the main tank?
Even if it was a new unknown alloy, something's got to give. P.S. Bizzaro (and I suppose others like Simon Grundy)also has thrown tanks the same way.

Well, cannon barrels are one of the strongest components on a tank, and because of the need to manage MASSIVE recoil from modern guns, the cannon is essentially extremely well attached to the tank, as anything else would mean that it eventually tears away from the tank. Which would be somewhat unhealthy for the tank.

In some cases, like the old Strv-103, the gun is even completely fixed to the hull, using the suspension to absorb ALL recoil instead of the usual mechanics.

Tenshinai wrote:

TN4994 wrote:On the Hulk grabbing the barrel. Wouldn't there be a weak point where the cannon separated from the main tank?
Even if it was a new unknown alloy, something's got to give. P.S. Bizzaro (and I suppose others like Simon Grundy)also has thrown tanks the same way.

Well, cannon barrels are one of the strongest components on a tank, and because of the need to manage MASSIVE recoil from modern guns, the cannon is essentially extremely well attached to the tank, as anything else would mean that it eventually tears away from the tank. Which would be somewhat unhealthy for the tank.

In some cases, like the old Strv-103, the gun is even completely fixed to the hull, using the suspension to absorb ALL recoil instead of the usual mechanics.

But isn't it designed to take a certain type of force? Much like a Submarine is designed to prevent implosion rather than explosion.
Back to the Hulk lifting the tank in the first place. Wouldn't the concentrated weight on his feet cause him to sink into the earth?

TN4994 wrote:But isn't it designed to take a certain type of force? Much like a Submarine is designed to prevent implosion rather than explosion.

Yes it is, but it´s also both made from very highend metal as well as one of the more beneficial shapes.

Whether it is actually enough for the "lifting by the barrel" to really be possible, i do not know, but i wont dismiss it too easily.

TN4994 wrote:Back to the Hulk lifting the tank in the first place. Wouldn't the concentrated weight on his feet cause him to sink into the earth?

Probably. Or rather, under most circumstances, yes.

Tenshinai wrote:

TN4994 wrote:Back to the Hulk lifting the tank in the first place. Wouldn't the concentrated weight on his feet cause him to sink into the earth?

Probably. Or rather, under most circumstances, yes.

Let's do a little arithmetic. An Abrams M1A2 tank is 68 tons, or 136,000 lbs. It will be spread across about 2 sq ft of surface that the Hulk is standing on. This gives us a pressure of approximately 3.25MPa (mega pascals). Stanford University has an interesting table of compressive strengths of soil and rock, and it gives the compressive strength of hard soil (difficult to indent with thumbnail) as 0.4-1MPa, so yes standing on hard soil, he is going to sink into the ground. it gives the compressive strength of weak rock (Crumbles with blows of pick end of hammer) at 1.25 to 5Mpa, so may or may not sink into weak rock, depending on how weak it is.

Tenshinai wrote:

TN4994 wrote:
Back to the Hulk lifting the tank in the first place. Wouldn't the concentrated weight on his feet cause him to sink into the earth?

fallsfromtrees wrote:
Probably. Or rather, under most circumstances, yes.

Let's do a little arithmetic. An Abrams M1A2 tank is 68 tons, or 136,000 lbs. It will be spread across about 2 sq ft of surface that the Hulk is standing on. This gives us a pressure of approximately 3.25MPa (mega pascals). Stanford University has an interesting table of compressive strengths of soil and rock, and it gives the compressive strength of hard soil (difficult to indent with thumbnail) as 0.4-1MPa, so yes standing on hard soil, he is going to sink into the ground. it gives the compressive strength of weak rock (Crumbles with blows of pick end of hammer) at 1.25 to 5Mpa, so may or may not sink into weak rock, depending on how weak it is.

If an adequate representative soil sample is procured and processed (10 lbs of soil through a #4 sieve) and a Proctor test is properly performed yielding the optimum moisture content per maximum dry unit weight represented by a properly drawn graph of the available data, then appropriately applied to obtain a 98+ percent compaction, then I can guarantee no sinkage.

If not, just backfill the hell out of it with some crusher-run from the nearest quarry. That stuff will compact like unchecked earwax.

Or, just have them fight on soil prepped, tamped and prepared for an airport runway, a reigning skycraper, or a nuclear power plant. Trust me, 10 hulks playing catch with a tank on that ground wont even put a dent in it, even considering the undistributed downward force of the constrained delivery system to base.

Fantastic Four's "Thing" setting on same surface and passing gas notwithstanding.

I get billed out over $1000 an hour for this. Robbery! The company to me.