Here Comes the Science

NPR's Talk of the Nation way back on September 16 broadcast this interview with University of Minnesota physics professor James Kakalios, whose book The Physics of Superheroes hits shelves tomorrow. The book showcases Kakalios' brilliant teaching method of taking classic superheroes we all know and love and then dissecting their powers and origins so as to provide his students with interesting tales of the hypothetical and uncanny. He's tackled everything from the neutron star that would have had to have been housed within Kypton to the pitifully low speed of over 100 mph that the Flash would have to attain run over water. He even tackles the age-old controversy over what exactly killed Gwen Stacy.

Kakalios gave a great interview on here that is worth your time, particularly the Q&A session where he gets a great question about Wonder Woman's heel height.

Obviously nobody sent me a reviewer copy of this book, but I am a huge fan of a similar title, The Science of Superheroes, by Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg, which gives some great hypothetical contextualizations of possible, necessary, and outlandish circumstances that would have to converge to allow your favorite hero to come into existence.

Personally, I'd like to get Professor Kakalios one-on-one to at long last understand exactly how Rob Liefeld's characters move and what type of physical conditions would have to exist on an alternate Earth for them to do so. THEN, I will be really impressed.