#what do you mean he released 2MVs?
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(Former) luz stans- how are we feeling about the comeback?
#luz#luz utaite#utaite#i could not believe it#what do you mean he released 2MVs?#I thought they‘d lock him up for 700 years#Idk it was so sudden#i hope he is in a better place mentally#but that takes time#almost would have preferred if he took a bit longer figuring it out#but idk#i hope for the best
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I came in like a battering-ball
Is it just me, or does the Human Torch get into a lot of fights with other good guys in the Marvel ‘Verse. I mean, sure, that one time he wasn’t fighting the real Captain America, and he’s often tricked into it by various baddies, but clearly that means moody teenagers don’t make the best superheroes...
In this issue he’s being controlled by the Puppet Master (whom we last saw being hugged to death by a giant cephalopod), who has decided it’s better to take out the members of the Fantastic 4 one-by-one rather than as a group. So he forces Johnny to try and make out with Ben’s blind girlfriend (and our baddie’s step-daughter) Alicia, somehow knowing exactly when Ben can walk in on them...canoodling...
Actually, that “something” is an “electronic visorscreen, powered by telepathic thought impulses”. Because if radioactive clay can make quasi-voodoo dolls, sure, why not?
The more-destructive half of the F4 proceeds to demolish poor Alicia’s apartment, as well as commit further property damage by one of them melting through an unknown number of floors to get up to the roof.
From his flagpole, the Thing scampers up to the tippy top, using his mass to get the pole to bend (Is that a realistic portrayal of 1960′s New York City flagpoles? I don’t know what they’re made of...) toward another building, whereupon he collects a sheet of cancer-causing asbestos and launches himself in the Torch’s direction.
Note that this is a fairly foolish endeavor, as the flight-capable teenager can change his trajectory, whereas once the Thing enters his parabolic arc he cannot. Given that Johnny clearly sees him launch, all he has to do is fly in the opposite direction he had been heading. Then, Ben would smash into the ground and the Puppet Master might just have taken out one of the members of Marvel’s First Family with nearly no effort.
But, perhaps more importantly, we have to ask ourselves how Ben was able to launch himself at all. Bending the pole does cause it to store up elastic potential energy, like you do when deforming a slingshot or a bow or a plastic spoon. And upon release the pole should convert that elastic potential energy into kinetic energy - i.e. movement - and return to its original shape, like the slingshot and the bow and the plastic spoon would. But a release is required - the Thing has to let go in order for the flagpole to “snap” back to its upright position. And since the pole isn’t moving when he lets go, the Thing will drop straight down.
The Thing cannot be both the load (the rock in the slingshot, the arrow in the bow, or whatever food item you’re launching from the spoon) and the source of the deformation if he wants to convert all that stored energy into a high enough velocity to chase down the Human Torch.
Now, if some giant green space hand had come down and bent the pole with the Thing on the end of it until the Thing could grasp the airduct, and then let go, then the Thing could launch himself simply by ripping off the asbestos sheet (detaching himself from the other building) and releasing all that elastic potential stored within the flag pole.*
It turns out the Puppet Master is too dumb to move Johnny out of the way of the Thing’s rather predictable path (Or, maybe he thinks the Thing smacking into him will deliver such a force it’ll knock him out and they’ll both go plunging to their doom). Ben weighs too much for Johnny to keep them both aloft, and they plummet toward a construction site.
Had the wrecking ball (I’m sorry, battering-ball) been stationary, sitting at the bottom of its arc, none of the Thing/Johnny’s velocity would have gotten translated into the swing. The Thing might have gotten his arm popped out of its socket due to the sudden change in velocity; Johnny probably snapped his neck from the whiplash. But it is swinging ever so slightly, so there’s a chance one of them isn’t dead.
Let’s pretend for a moment that the wrecking ball was at a slightly higher angle than the image showed: 30 degrees. Let’s also pretend that tT/tHT are falling completely vertically, not at an arc, and the Thing catches the ball while the two are traveling 50 m/s, not quite terminal velocity.** 25 m/s of that 50 is tangential to the ball’s possible circular arc, so that’s the velocity that they’ll actually be able to travel around the crane with.
The question is will they be able to “spin around...like two human propellor blades” traveling that speed. Is it fast enough for the chain to not go slack when they reach the top of the arc, to ensure they’ll keep traveling in an actual circle on their way back down?
Yes, we need some physics equations to help us answer this.
Specifically, we need to consider centripetal force (Hey - I mentioned that last week!) - the force generated by circular motion. It’s equal to the mass of the moving body times its velocity squared times the radius of the circle it’s traveling in, or mv2/r. We don’t know r, but let’s use 5 m for this exercise.
When traveling in a vertical circle, said body (a JohnnyBenBall combo) needs to be traveling fast enough so that when at the top of the arc, the tension in the cable is greater than or equal to zero. To find that minimum velocity you’re actually balancing the centripetal force and the force of gravity, which is just mass times acceleration due to gravity (9.8 m/s2), or mg. Lucky for us, that means we can ignore the mass of JohnnyBenBall, because it cancels out. The minimum velocity at the top of the circle is √gr. That comes out to be exactly 7 m/s.
7 meters per second is obviously less than 25, but I said that’s the minimum needed at the top of the arc. Because we’re moving vertically, gravity’s constantly modifying the value - JohnnyBellBall will travel fastest at the bottom of the arc, and slowest at the top.
We can get that bottom velocity using the principle of conservation of energy - the kinetic energy (1/2mv2) at the bottom of the arc has to equal the kinetic energy at the top plus the added potential energy due to gravity (mgh).*** So, the minimum bottom velocity - which also happens to be the highest velocity the swinging body will experience if it’s only under the power of gravity - is ~15.7 m/s.****
So under ideal conditions, the Thing and the Human Torch will make at least one revolution. If they make more than one, there’s a good chance that the cable will get wrapped around the crane arm, continually shortening its length with each revolution as energy leaks from the system due to friction and whatnot. Maybe it gets wrapped all the way up and they both fall that however many meters to the ground and Johnny breaks several bones after all that effort.
The comic fails to show/inform us the more likely ending, where their velocity finally sinks below that minimum needed, causing JohnnyBenBall to drop like a rock as far down as it can go and then pathetically swing back and forth in a shallow arc until the two meta humans deign to let go.
After all this, the Puppet Master decides he needs to get closer for his powers to work even more strongly so they’ll actually off one another, as opposed to just hurl insults. Alicia figures out what’s going on all by herself and, after traveling to the big showdown spot (”led on by some uncanny sixth sense which sightless people so often possess”), yells at Johnny to snap out of it just in time for him to pull out of some sort of kamikaze dive. Her step-father responds to this turn of events by ordering Johnny to fly straight into an oncoming jet, which he does, but apparently he isn’t actually made of solid matter?
Is the Human Torch really a giant ball of plasma?
So radioactive clay can mind control giant-balls of plasma? Does that mean Puppet Master can control the SUN!?
The comic ends with the Human Torch setting the radioactive clay puppet on fire, which burns its master’s hands to the point where he claims he won’t be able to carve again. Alicia convinces Ben not to beat a man when he’s down, and lets the Puppet Master go to cause trouble in a future issue.
* This all assumes Ben didn’t just use the flag pole like a giant spring in a trampoline, and jumped off the side of that other building’s airduct using the restorative force as an assist. We can’t see what he actually did.
** We have to assume they’re high enough to have an entire conversation while falling, so they definitely would have reached terminal velocity, which happens in 10ish seconds.
*** Need an example of gravitational potential energy? Hold something valuable and fragile over the floor at an arbitrary height. Let go. Potential energy got converted into kinetic energy.
**** Note that 25 m/s isn’t JohnnyBenBall’s maximum speed, because they’re not at the bottom of the arc, yet. They’d pick up another quarter (ish) of a m/s.
Strange Tales #116 - Writer: Stan Lee, Art: Dick Ayers, Ink: George Bell
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