Tuesday, January 15, 2019

Procrastinating, super-powers and caloric intake

Abstract
Things that keeps me up at night, how much calories in
a short plasma burst, and things I am
doing instead of writing articles.



If you are a member of the male caste of the human race, it is very probable that at some point or the other you have dreamt or even wished that you had super powers. Some of us (gee I wonder who...) still do. By the way in the spirit of equality, this is not to say that being a female precludes you from having the same super-aspirations, it's just that men are basically over-grown kids, thus we tend to sustain this dream longer into adulthood.

Who among us haven't mused about having superman's awesome super-power arsenal. But most of us would settle even for the modest powers of, eh, let's say, Cypher which is essentially that he is a polyglot. 

At any rate, this past week I was a bit under the weather, and one of my computers crashed, which gave me a good excuse to procrastinate. One of the things I did this week was binge on the first season of 'Titans' - the DC young superhero team comprised of Dick Grayson aka NightWing, Raven, StarFire, and Beast Boy. 

Burning daddy to a crisp at a gas station, with super-heated plasma bursts


The thing about being both a geek AND a physicist is that they sometime interfere. destructively.
This happened to me last night, as after watching two episodes of the series, I got to thinking, other than being a full on badass, does StarFire really work? I mean physics-wise? 
Her superpowers are (at this point in the plot) having the ability to discharge super heated plasma (I guess?) from her body, and a slight healing factor. It is also implied that her powers are dependent on some inner reservoir of energy. Which got me thinking. What might be the energy budget of such a thing, I mean at some point we see her burning a bad guy to a crisp, and at no point in the series do we actually see her eat anything. She drinks some hard liquor sometimes (tequila, whiskey shots etc.) but she doesn't seem to eat anything. This begs the question - since she exerts bursts of energy, how does she replenish? 

Well Done, extra crispy.


Supposedly she gets her powers from the sun, like good ol' Kal, and and some point she says she needs several hours in the sun to fully recharge, but that math doesn't really work at all.

<Warning: Physics ahead>
At one point we see her showcasing her powers by burning the body of a tractor. Usually cars and other heavy machinery's body is made out of steel. In fact the average automotive contains about 55% steel, which breaks down to chassis and body, the latter is the majority of the percentage. Some high end cars use aluminum for the body, but this is both rare and expensive. This is mostly done to decrease total weight in favor of energy conservation.

So she probably burnt through steel or iron, and since we don't see any spill-over it makes sense to assume she actually vaporized the iron. The latent heat for the vaporization of iron from room temperature is roughly given by 350 kJ/mol. From the picture we can assess the vaporized area as about \(\pi\;(m^2)\) and the average sheet metal used in cars bodies is about 1.6 mm and mass per square meter of 11.84 \(\frac{kg}{m^2} \) so the total mass of the evaporated material turns out to be about \(37.2\; kg\) which is about 666 moles of Iron. This means that this short burst of about ~3 seconds delivered at least 233 MJ, which is a whopping 55712 kcal. 

Let me illustrate this by using food.

This is the equivalent of 24 Large cheesy bite pies from Pizza Hut. Not slices. Whole pies.
This is the equivalent of 30 Big Mac meals, complete with a large order of fries and a big shake.

In 3 seconds.

And she never eats a darn bite.

So let's examine the story of solar charging.

The solar constant, which is the mean solar energy density flux on earth's surface is roughly \(1.362 \frac{kW}{m^2}\), let's call the human body surface at about \(2\; m^2\) thus it will take StarFire about \[  \frac{233 000}{2\cdot 1.362}\simeq 85,500\; sec \simeq 24\; hrs \]

</Warning: Physics ahead>

Which means that for that paltry 3 seconds of showing off she should have sun-bathed for that whole day. Assuming obviously she absorbs everything. With 100% efficiency. And a 100% efficiency discharge.


Lightly toasted tractor anyone?
Anyway, with a steady diet of maybe 15 large burger meals a day and a strict sunning regiment of say all the available sun per day, she might actually be dangerous for more than 3 seconds a day.

Now I get why she's such a devout martial arts student... 
She only has so much juice in her.

By the way, this makes me curious about scenes of female super-heroes eating. For some odd reason I can't seem to recall to many of those. Most female super-beings that were shot eating are either villains or straight up horribly mutated beings. hmmm....


Having said that, it was fun to watch the first season. And as an added bonus we get to see Deanna Troy smashed by a car.... which is positive in a way. I never cared for her, nor Riker for that matter. 

Be that as it may, the last Purim party my wife and I attended, we went as Riker and Troy, we had to be a couple. She was pregnant. No way was she pulling anything but the infamous Troy dress. 
Plus, I wasn't nearly as Picard-esque as I wanted to be, and I don't think she would have gone for the Crusher red hair look. Oh, right, and being that tool's mom. Awful.

Anyway, now you know what keeps me awake at night. Energy calculations and super heroes. I know. Lame.
 

I need to go back to work. Damn.


Oh right, another instance of superheroes charging up....