By day he’s a mild-mannered physics professor. By night he becomes ...
(Drum roll, please.)
OK, so he’s still a physics professor. But James Kakalios’ hobby of looking at physics in superhuman ways can get even the most ardent science hater interested in the way their world works (or perhaps the comic book world).
Kakalios will give a talk Thursday at Minnesota State University called “Everything I Know About Physics I Learned from Reading Comic Books.”
The title is also the name of a seminar class he teaches at the University of Minnesota, where he is a faculty member in the physics and astronomy department. “As a physics professor and a comic book fan,” he said, “I am simultaneously a nerd and a geek.” His popular class answers some burning questions, such as: How strong you would have to be to leap a tall building in a single bound? Was it the fall or the webbing that killed Gwen Stacy, Spider-Man’s girlfriend, in the classic Amazing Spider-Man No.
121? How does Kitty Pryde from the XMen comics and movies use quantum mechanics to walk through walls? What is the chemical composition of Captain America’s shield? Who is faster: Superman or the Flash? He also has a fairly busy speaking schedule. He’ll be doing the superhero talk, the same one he’s giving at MSU, five times in October.
What students and everyone else finds appealing about the class and lectures, Kakalios says, is he does away with the heavy- duty, whip-about-thegraphing- calculator- and Greek-symbols math in favor of a Powerpoint presentation and comic book and film clips ( and a few equations, but don’t worry, you won’t be asked to figure out the angular momentum of pi or anything).
Kakalios considers himself a lifelong comic book fan. He began infusing his physics lectures with comic book material slowly “in order to liven things up.”
When it went over well, he added more, and eventually, when the university allowed faculty to propose seminar classes, he proposed his superhero- charged physics class. That led to his book, “The Physics of Superheroes,” published by Gotham Books.
During his seminar class or his guest lectures, the questions that come from the audience are very much affected by the dominant title at the movie theaters.
When “Spider- Man 2” came out, people wondered how strong Spidey’s webs would have to be to stop a speeding train. Or when “Batman Begins” came out, they wondered about the physics of grappling guns.
Kakalios’ work in this realm have made him a sought-after consultant.
His knowledge of superhero physics caught the attention of producers of the upcoming film “The Watchman,” based on the popular graphic novel of the same name.
“My audience varies. I’ve given talks at colleges, local area high schools, 92nd Street Y, Congress, the San Diego Comic Book Convention,” he said.
“This is open to the public, and it should be accessible to everyone from high school students all the way down to physics professors.”
Kalakios joined the U of M’s School of Physics and Astronomy in 1988. When he’s not pondering the physics of comic books, his research ranges from the nano to the neuro, with active studies of the optical and electronic properties of hydrogenated amoprhous silicon thin films containing silicon nanocrystalline inclusions.
He’s also busy with investigations of voltage fluctuations recorded from the brains of awake, behaving rats.
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