I am too much of a skeptic to get much enjoyment out of shows about super powers. I know too much physics. Before getting over-educated I enjoyed Superman comics and the TV episodes with George Reeves, and I even had a good time watching the more recent Fantastic Four film, even though it is wildly implausible. Anyway, I happened to watch part of an episode of No Ordinary Family, mostly a fight between Mr. Powell and a chemically-induced werewolf. Just at the end, Mrs. Powell (Stephanie) ran off into the future. I guess this is like Superman flying twice the speed of light to go into the past. I don't recall how he was supposed to return.
I remembered the show's trailer, where she zips around the track and her friend says she was going a mile every six seconds. That comes to 600 miles per hour, and it got me thinking. An ordinary racing track has two 100 meter straight segments and two curved segments at the ends, each a 100 meter arc. The diameter of the arcs is about 64 meters, or a radius of just under 32 m. How much centripetal force is required to keep Stephanie on the curve when she is going 600 mph? It works out like this:
- F = Mv2/r, where
- M = 50 kg (110 pounds, assumed)
- v = 600 mph = 880 feet/sec = 268 m/s
- r = 31.83 m
- v2 = 71,900, so
- F = 113,000 Nt / 9.8 = 11,500 kg force
But this is possibly rather slow, held back by those nasty laws of physics of a body following a circular arc. No wonder she said, "I thought I was faster than that." It is noted elsewhere that when running in a straight line, she covers ten miles in five seconds. That is 3,000 mph, or mach 4, substantially faster than the old Supersonic Transport. She'd carry along a shock wave that broke out all the windows within a few miles on either side! It must be that her super power includes a super-slippery way of getting the air to separate and close in behind without creating a shock wave.
Magic reality doesn't have to make sense, I suppose. Neither do I, considering what day it is…
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