RAW DOGMA written by Nkrumah Steward
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| Professor uses Comic Books to Teach Physics |
 What ever happened to the kid that used to argue at lunch whether or not the Hulk could beat up Ben Grimm? Ben Grimm would be "The Thing" for those of you who were deprived as children and never spent your childhood exercising your imagination in the world of comic books.
So what ever happened to that guy?
Chances are he fell way short of marrying Invisible Girl like he had originally sought out to accomplish.
However, chances are good that he is Jim Kakalios, professor of physics at the University of Minnesota.
At the top of his syllabus it reads "Everything I Know of Science I Learned From Reading Comic Books."
I want to nominate him as the 8BM.com world's coolest professor in North America for 2002.
The whole idea behind his physics class is using comic books to pose questions that the students have to solve.
For example, if the Flash was entombed in a block of ice and he used his powers to make his body vibrate fast enough to melt the ice, how fast would he have to make his body move? Another question would be would Spider-man's web really be strong enough to support him as he swings from building to building?
Man, if this guy was my high school physics teacher, it would've completely changed my life -- I might've actually put the effort forth to understand this shit.
My understanding of science as it stands is so limited the only reason I can give as to why 30 story monsters don't crawl out of the Pacific and kick Tokyo to pieces is because if they could, they would've done it by now.
Other questions included, how much would the Flash need to eat in order to run around the globe in 80 seconds?
Evidently Kakalios also figured out why Krypton exploded. How did he do that? He calculated Krypton's gravity by figuring out the force required to leap a building on Earth. He then concluded that Superman's planet must have had a core of super dense - and most importantly, dangerously unstable material and thus "Then you realize why Krypton exploded," Kakalios says.
He is my hero.
Kakalios came up with the idea for his class after applying physics to a 1973 Spiderman comic in which Peter Parker's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, dies.
Gwen was knocked from a bridge by the evil Green Goblin, but Spiderman catches her with his webbing an instant before she hits the water. When Spiderman pulls her up, he discovers to his horror that she is dead.
While Spider-man was shocked, Kakalios was not.
The professor estimated Gwen's falling velocity, applied Newton's Second Law of Motion and calculated the G-forces exerted when she went from 95 mph to a standstill in an instant. "It's not surprising her neck broke," Kakalios says.
Kakalios made Gwen's death an exam problem during the course's first semester last fall.
This guy is cooler than words can express. |
