A Comical Look at Real Physics

by mayue on 11月 14, 2005

这一期的SCIENCE介绍了一本新书:The Physics of Superheroes(Gotham, New York, 2005. 384 pp. $26. ISBN 1-592-40146-5)。作者是James Kakalios。

James Kakalios is a physicist who knows how to shrink the separation between physics and play. A lifelong comic-book junkie, Kakalios developed a freshman seminar he titled “Everything I Know About Science I Learned from Reading Comic Books.” The Physics of Superheroes builds on that popular course.

In the introduction, Kakalios describes his motivation for writing the book.

The book follows the familiar path of introductory college physics classes: it starts with Newtonian mechanics, moves to the conservation laws of energy and thermodynamics, veers into electricity and magnetism, and ends with the modern physics of relativity and quantum mechanics. But the examples for each topic spring directly from the comics, and the book reproduces dozens of panels that depict various scenes.

Three extra sections follow the main text. The first offers a list of cases where comic books clearly got their physics wrong.

In addition to discussing the physics, Kakalios often digresses into the history of comic books. Kakalios infuses the book with humor.

In the end, Kakalios demonstrates that if one suspends belief and accepts that radioactive spiders or mutant arch-criminals exist, much of the physics in comic books is surprisingly reliable. From Newtonian mechanics to the quantum world, comic-book authors generally know what they’re talking about. And with The Physics of Superheroes as a guide, now so will their readers.

考虑到Science的版权问题,以上只摘抄原文主要内容,有条件的可以登陆Science去阅读全文。予教于乐,相信此书是能够使年轻人对物理感兴趣的好读物。

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