The Physics of Spider-Man’s Webs | Hacker News Reader

The Physics of Spider-Man’s Webs

wired.com

32 pointsbjansn23 comments

Comic book physics is always good for a fun discussion, but no one seems to ever want to discuss comic book economics. As in, "Oh my goodness! That arch-criminal just stole a $200,000 diamond! Time to swoop in an cause a few tens of millions of dollars in property and collateral damage in order to retrieve it!"

Maybe because too often that's real-life economics, too. It's just not usually about retrieving the item (as comic books might imply).

"Oh no, that dude stole [insert item of low value X]! Let's imprison him and cause [insert vastly larger number Y] in tax dollars to punish him!"

But even if you consider that decision rational, think of the cost of property insurance.

Seriously, what insurance company is going to offer to insure the Daily Planet building with it being a known magnet for supervillans looking for Superman? Based on that can we assume that the Planet is almost certainly uninsured and paying for it's own repairs out of wafer thin newspaper profits. If so frankly how is it even still in business?

>>>If so frankly how is it even still in business?

Newspapers sell a lot better in a universe with constant supervillain attacks.

What makes you think vigilantes (with super powers, no less) would care about that?

Because they'll get sued, the government will force them to retire in hiding, they'll get jobs they hate, get bored, take risks in maintaining their secrecy in an attempt to relive the glory days, join up with a mysterious organization without thinking it through, destroy half the city to save it, get popular again, and repeat.

That would make an Incredible movie.

And then Captain America is arrested and then shot![1] But don't worry, he comes back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_%28comics%29

Not to mention the basic premise of the "science hero" in which a single man develops world-changing technology and then never shares it with anyone.

That's why I loved the show "Dollhouse" - one of the central themes of the show is how the brain-rewriting technology is progressing and how it will change the world. As much as everyone gushes over Firefly and Avengers, I think Dollhouse should be remembered as Whedon's sci-fi creation that really focuses on the classical themes of SF - speculating on how a science/magical event would change the world.

also, how many Congressmen and pundits could the X-Men have bought with the money they spent on an invisible jet and an underground fortress?

One often thought is that the technology is too dangerous to share with people or governments considering the bad things they might do with their creations.

Related to article; I remember once Parker needed money so he approached a tech company as Spiderman to sell them his web formula. He demoed it by suspending some heavy equipment from the ceiling.

The scientists were amazed and couldn't wait to see the formula. That is, until the equipment came crashing to the ground.

Turns out, Parker created his formula to wither away after about an hour or so; to prevent him from covering the city in webs.

Parker decided he couldn't wait the months it would take to remake the formula to be permanent as demanded by the scientists, so he moved on.

That day the Marvel Universe almost had SpideyGlue.

> One often thought is that the technology is too dangerous to share with people or governments considering the bad things they might do with their creations.

When one hero does this, it's reasonable. When every science hero does this, it's suspicious. It's mostly visible in the Marvel Universe, which is notably science-hero-heavy. The fact that civilians aren't driving around in flying cars in Marvel is incredibly conspicuous.

And yeah, the commercial applications of spideyglue are obvious and numerous, even with its short lifespan.

I just take it that government agencies like SHIELD prevent mass commercial uses of certain technologies so they can have all the cool stuff for themselves.

After all, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe there are flying cars but only SHIELD agents have them.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReedRichardsIsUse...

That's actually the premise behind The Incredibles and Hancock: the services offered are way too expensive for the city to afford.

But I agree with you, there should be more of that.

Stopping a $200,000 theft might easily be worth $10 million, because a successful public theft does a lot more than $200,000 in damage to society. The point is to make the theft unprofitable and thus deter others. Having the thief confronted immediately with ridiculous force is expensive, but I could be persuaded that it makes more of an impression than letting him get away and catching him weeks later.

X-Men has/had (I haven't read any story-lines from the last 20 years or so) length arcs where the animosity from government is split between fear over mutants and anger over the destruction, and where a lot of the fear is driven by the massive amounts of collateral damage.

If he did have webs as part of his super hero powers, the webs would probably come out of his butt and not his wrist.

OK, that's a mental image I really didn't want. My day is ruined now.

When he transformed into man-spider in the fox tv show, i think he actually did shoot webs from his arms. Don't recall if there was a more human version of him that did shoot webs as a super power over technology.

The first movie series with Toby McGuire had the webs as biologically produced (aka super-power). The comics always had them as spinners that he'd strap onto his wrists and that would occasionally run dry, adding plot complications.

Like the story said, the movies didn't want to get into the development of them, so took the simpler explanation of "he's part spider, duh!" I did however, like the scene where the camera zoomed in on the barbs on his palms that let him grasp buildings, etc.

Sam Raimi stated that the reason for the biological webbing was the implausibility of a high school kid in his room developing a super-strong adhesive that Dow Chemical (or Oscorp) couldn't. The Amazing films, for all their faults, did a pretty good job of justifying his mechano-chemical web shooters (he stole super-webbing from genetically engineered, farmed spiders at Oscorp).

Sorta. When he had the black suit that turned out to be a symbiote, it allowed him to shoot webbing without technology. He shot them out on the back of his hands as opposed to the traditional from the palm.

But I believe there have been versions of the character that had organic webbing, but it's been a while for me so I don't know what the latest ideas are.

There's a superhero webcomic called Spinerette that includes this - the titular heroine shoots webbing out of her tailbone, and is quite grumpy that this isn't nearly as cool as Spider-man's power.

For more than you probably don't want to think about, Scientifically Accurate Spiderman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnE3uyj9Grg

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