The Bobiverse books have been on my to-read list for quite a while. My coworker, David, informed me last week that they feature 3D printing at the atomic scale. He suggested a blog post analyzing how fast you could conceivably print something atom-by-atom.
The superhero’s love interest (or perhaps an innocent bystander) dangles from a tall building (or helicopter). The music speeds up. The grip loosens. Then, with a scream, the victim falls, and it is up to the superhero to catch them.
Superheroes often catch falling victims at the last second. The classic movie example is from the 1978 Superman, when Lois Lane falls from a helicopter (1:04):
It happens in basically every superhero movie – someone falls, apparently to their death, only to be caught and saved at the last second.
If you’re like me, (or Sheldon Cooper) you may ask yourself whether being caught in the heroic arms of a superhero after a hundreds-of-feet fall would tend to save the victim or “immediately slice them into three equal pieces.” (0:34)
Wayne *from Brandon Sanderson’s second Mistborn series) is one of my favorite fictional characters… mostly because of his inner (and outer) dialogue. He has a special power that’s fairly common in fantasy: the ability to compress time within a “bubble,” allowing him to move more quickly than the world around him (see also one of the most useful powers of Aurors in the Licanius Trilogy by James Islington).
Today we’ll look at how internally consistent the rules of Wayne’s “speed bubbles” are.
In the last post we looked at whether the recoil from a handgun could send a person flying. Today, staying on theme, we take another look at firearm propulsion in fantasy:
He flew up into the night sky. Unfortunately, the Ironspine was built in set-back tiers, the upper stories growing progressively narrower as you went higher. That meant that even though he Pushed himself directly up, he was soon soaring in open darkness, mists around him, the building’s side a good ten feet away. Wax reached into his coat and removed his short-barreled shotgun from the long, sleevelike pocket inside. he turned—pointing it outward—braced it against his side, and fired. He was light enough that the kick flung him toward the building… he slammed into the wall of the tower. -Brandon Sanderson, The Alloy of Law The question today, inspired by my recent listen to the conclusion of the Renegades series, is this: Can the recoil from a handgun send you flying into a stone wall? Nova locked her jaw around another scream and pulled the trigger. The kickback sent her flying into the stone wall. The gun blew out of her hand, ricocheting off one of the smaller bells with a resounding clang before it careened out of the tower window.
-Supernova, Marissa Meyer
A couple weeks ago I listened to A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, T. Kingfisher’s 2021 Lodestar Award-winning YA fantasy novel. I enjoyed it overall, but one sentence caught my engineer’s ear:
"Mercy!" said Aunt Tabitha, the first time she walked in and saw me standing over a pan of cinnamon rolls that had caught fire. She grabbed for the flour and dumped it out over the pan, smothering the flames. I’d heard of explosions in flour mills and had the general idea that flour is pretty flammable. Here was a chance to m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶l̶o̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ scientifically answer a question:
Is flour a good fire extinguisher?
In Part 1 I made the case that Amps are the electrical equivalent of a current of leaking Coke and Volts are the electrical equivalent of the pressure causing that Coke to leak. This was fascinating (I’m sure it was), but I ran out of time to address the original question: why did I nerd-cringe when I listened to this line from Marissa Meyers’ Archenemies?
Only the digital readings on its side indicated that amps were flowing through the system. Nova adjusted the dials, increasing the voltage. |
Mechanical FictioneeringA fusion of fantasy and physics by author / engineer Travis Daniel Bow
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AuthorTravis is an avid writer, reader, and DIYer in the Reno, NV area. Blog Roll |