estimates on power needed for wonder woman's bracelets

www.wired.com/2017/06/physics-bullets-ve...er-womans-bracelets/

slim36 wrote: www.wired.com/2017/06/physics-bullets-ve...er-womans-bracelets/

I always love this stuff.

The article was a bit simplistic and used a smaller bullet than was common in WWI. But the essence of the article was reasonably close. She has to be able to exert over 70KW (nearly 100 horsepower) with each forearm. Interesting conclusion.

Yet it doesn't take much power to stop or deflect the bullets, but accelerating/decelerating her arm fast enough to block the bullets would require almost all that power. Then there is the minor issue of needing at least four times faster reaction time than human (more like 10x when you consider her handling multiple bullets while moviing).

So, she has superhuman reflexes and she's astoundingly strong with very fast twitch muscles. And bones that don't break and tendons that don't tear. Something we all know.

I like my superheroines best when things can be described using ordinary physics. The fanciful part is always the in the genetics, which have some alien/godstuff mixed in. Works for Krypts. Works for daughters of Zeus. He didn't give her magic. He gave her some outstandingly cool genetics.

I absolutely hate it when "magic" is tossed out as the only explanation. Leave that to Harry Potter and Frozen, et. al. I want the math to work on my heroines.

And yes, I know, I'm geeking out. But this is the place for it.

Shadar

I love this sort of thing too.

Then you can kvetch at the numbers. Like she doesn't _have_ to slow her arms down so fast, she could even block a bullet w/o slowing her arm down and keep moving it to hit another bullet. There is a very good chance that rounds from a machine gun would "walk" in a line. So she just moves her hand in an arc, blocking the bullets as they hit. I think the article established that she doesn't need to halt and brace to block.

That would affect the power requirements of moving her arms, but also make the equation super extra complicated because we'd have to guess at bullets in a single arc she might be able to block (etc). It is good to just use a simpler "worst level calc" to compute something. If she only needs 70KW (100 hp) to block a machine gun, that seems ok. The other math could only bring that number down (making it easier).

And I love comments on her reaction time and speed. (WW IS supposed to have super-speed, we just don't often see it except during bullets and bracelets.)

She does move from bracers to shield in the movie. It looked like she might be able to keep up, but it's a lot less taxing to just block most of the things with her shield (including larger bullets).

I don't mind magic, but I like operating rules. If magic denies physics, what's the limit (etc). "no limits" magic works better for an all powerful bad guy (Q, Mxyzptlk, Mordu). Story > explanations though, just a really good story will probably figure out a way to explain things w/o too much exposition or being boring.

Of course, almost 100% of shows/comics/books with super-strong characters mostly ignore physics anyway. Just watched the first two episodes of Strong Woman Do Bong Soon (short: it's fun, going to watch more). In one scene as a little girl she pushed out her small hand and stopped a speeding car instantly (which also didn't kill the driver). Physics says the car would have just tossed her as she can't have the mass (Or exert enough force with her small feet) to resist being thrown. The show plays this for fun, she bends a pull up bar down instead of going up, she rolls out of bed and hits the floor and the house shakes, she jumps up and down in excitement and the house shakes. At the same time she rides a normal bike, rides elevators, etc. She's not super-heavy. The show is light-hearted, so it's easier to just ignore physics violations, it's just that part of my brain can't help but point them out.

Kryptonians and other flying bricks can get a pass due to conciously (or subconciously) using their flying power to resist moving. Of course that is simply passing the buck to explain their flying power ... which again defies physics so much that it might as well be "magic".

(you can have real fun trying to explain Mjolnir. Does it emit gravitons to keep from being moved? Or somehow increase it's inertial mass w/o increasing its gravitational mass? Maybe it can bring out the inertial mass of the giant cosmic storm contained within it, someone has to be able to move something more massive than a solar system to move Mjolnir aginst it's will.)

Then theres the zapping mode she can trigger by crossing the bracelets.

TwiceOnThursdays wrote: I love this sort of thing too.

Then you can kvetch at the numbers. Like she doesn't _have_ to slow her arms down so fast, she could even block a bullet w/o slowing her arm down and keep moving it to hit another bullet. There is a very good chance that rounds from a machine gun would "walk" in a line. So she just moves her hand in an arc, blocking the bullets as they hit. I think the article established that she doesn't need to halt and brace to block.

That would affect the power requirements of moving her arms, but also make the equation super extra complicated because we'd have to guess at bullets in a single arc she might be able to block (etc). It is good to just use a simpler "worst level calc" to compute something. If she only needs 70KW (100 hp) to block a machine gun, that seems ok. The other math could only bring that number down (making it easier).

And I love comments on her reaction time and speed. (WW IS supposed to have super-speed, we just don't often see it except during bullets and bracelets.)

She does move from bracers to shield in the movie. It looked like she might be able to keep up, but it's a lot less taxing to just block most of the things with her shield (including larger bullets).

I don't mind magic, but I like operating rules. If magic denies physics, what's the limit (etc). "no limits" magic works better for an all powerful bad guy (Q, Mxyzptlk, Mordu). Story > explanations though, just a really good story will probably figure out a way to explain things w/o too much exposition or being boring.

Of course, almost 100% of shows/comics/books with super-strong characters mostly ignore physics anyway. Just watched the first two episodes of Strong Woman Do Bong Soon (short: it's fun, going to watch more). In one scene as a little girl she pushed out her small hand and stopped a speeding car instantly (which also didn't kill the driver). Physics says the car would have just tossed her as she can't have the mass (Or exert enough force with her small feet) to resist being thrown. The show plays this for fun, she bends a pull up bar down instead of going up, she rolls out of bed and hits the floor and the house shakes, she jumps up and down in excitement and the house shakes. At the same time she rides a normal bike, rides elevators, etc. She's not super-heavy. The show is light-hearted, so it's easier to just ignore physics violations, it's just that part of my brain can't help but point them out.

Kryptonians and other flying bricks can get a pass due to conciously (or subconciously) using their flying power to resist moving. Of course that is simply passing the buck to explain their flying power ... which again defies physics so much that it might as well be "magic".

(you can have real fun trying to explain Mjolnir. Does it emit gravitons to keep from being moved? Or somehow increase it's inertial mass w/o increasing its gravitational mass? Maybe it can bring out the inertial mass of the giant cosmic storm contained within it, someone has to be able to move something more massive than a solar system to move Mjolnir aginst it's will.)

Agreed that if you take into account all of comicdom, then magic is the only answer. But if you narrow it down to those with a roughly Kryptonian or Amazonian-grade power set, then flying becomes the most challenging power to explain via physics. Some kind of antigravity organ or telekinesis becomes the only non-magical ways out, and that's still outside physics as we understand it.

But that at least establishes a boundary of sorts and a basis for computation. Rules and boundaries and characters bound to those rules are important to me. Binding characters to the limits of their biology allows for writing that mimics human experience, albeit on a grander scale. Something everyone instinctively understands within the context of classical heroic sagas and story-telling techniques.

slim36 wrote: Then theres the zapping mode she can trigger by crossing the bracelets.

I suspect this is more a mental requirement. Crossing her bracers puts her into the right mindset to trigger her shielding power/pulse, and mimics when she first accidentally triggered the power.

As the power is in her not the bracers. Though I wonder if the DCEU is using the old idea that her bracers limit her power, so she can control it better/learn its use. This was last used in the DC52 run, but not in the Rucka reboot.

the zapper is also like ultraman en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraman_(character)#Powers_and_Abilities. Superpowers are great fun!

Slightly off-topic, but the article about equal momentum and then force used got me thinking of Terri Hatcher stopping a runaway juggernaut in her civvies with her bare hands. She sounds pretty nervous as she squares up to the massive speeding truck, but she looks shocked to see she hasn't been mown down and is "holding her own" with the truck. Just a bit of force with a push from her shoulders through her arms brings the juggernaut to a halt. It is the most impressive scene I've watched in our genre on mainstream tv.

The video of the first use of the crossed bracelets looks like some kind of fuel-air blast/shockwave that somehow only goes in one direction. Looks useful for crowd dispersal. It could have appeal to crowds that enjoy extremely loud sounds.