Physics FAIL in the Avengers movie? (SPOILER ALERT)

[TheVrolok]

Wow, so much physics fail by the OP it hurts.

 

[jagec]

The reactor is running a magnet that keeps metal shards from migrating toward his heart and ripping it apart..

Couldn't he just get surgery?

Also, the OP MUST be trolling.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Couldn't he just get surgery?

Also, the OP MUST be trolling.

The shards are too close to his heart and would kill him.

 

[Paratus]

The Mk 7 suit very clearly has its own power source, or otherwise it couldn't remotely deploy.

Also, he was clearly alive after his suit shut down from lack of power. After the first movie, I'm pretty sure he learned not to attach his life force to his suit power.



His technology all seems extremely power intensive. His repulsion tech seems like some sort of plasma based technology or some massive particle acceleration based technology which must suck energy down, and he is using it constantly to fly. Also, he was spamming his lasers, which clearly take some absurd about of power considering they seem to rip through armor plating like paper.

So I did some quick calculations and it looks like a space shuttle requires 900MWHs to reach orbit. So the Mark I chest piece was in the ball park for being able to take shuttle to orbit.

I think the writers are under estimating how much power his chest piece has and how much energy he's using.

 

[Paratus]

No, if the shuttle went straight up, it would escape Earth and fly out into space.

If you drop a bullet at the same time you fired a bullet, which one hits the ground first?

Incorrect. The shuttle never reaches escape velocity which is around 7 miles a second. It only reaches 5 miles per second which is orbital velocity.

 

[pelov]

Incorrect. The shuttle never reaches escape velocity which is around 7 miles a second. It only reaches 5 miles per second which is orbital velocity.

Although I wish you gentlemen were discussing the elongated whangus of my Iron friend, I think he's referring to escape velocity and not orbital velocity; hence the "straight up" wording.

 

[her209]

Okay. How does a plane fly? Don't give me bullshit about the bernoulli effect, thats not right.

Do you, unlike the entire aero industry, have a single clean understanding of what happens in an airflow to cause lift and have it clean enough to describe different situations that the airfoil will still produce lift even though classical definitions do not?

Because your explanation will revolutionize the entire aero industry.

Oh so its wrong because you say so? That's rich.

 

[her209]

Do planes fall to earth? That portal was only a little above the sky scrapers, and he didn't make it that much farther after he went through the portal. There was no reason he shouldn't have fallen back to earth. He was very close to earth, the only reason he was in space was the portal he wasn't very far away from earth.

He was quite far from the opening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZk4U9pxOVo

 

[Paratus]

Although I wish you gentlemen were discussing the elongated whangus of my Iron friend, I think he's referring to escape velocity and not orbital velocity; hence the "straight up" wording.

Doesn't matter. Escape velocity is higher than orbital velocity. The shuttle would reach a maximum height and come back down. There's not enough energy in the external tank and SRBs to escape the Earths pull.

Btw you deserve a custom title for the pics you find.

 

[sigurros81]

I was watching the ending of Avengers tonight and I noticed a physics FAIL. After Ironman redirects the nuclear missile through the portal, he lets go and starts falling back to Earth. Except, if you'll notice, he's in freaking space where the effect of gravity is minimal. Even if he were "falling", his rate of free fall would not be fast enough for him to fall through the portal before it closed.

This is an outrage!

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Oh so its wrong because you say so? That's rich.

No. Its wrong because its simply wrong, Its a fact.

 

[pelov]

Doesn't matter. Escape velocity is higher than orbital velocity. The shuttle would reach a maximum height and come back down. There's not enough energy in the external tank and SRBs to escape the Earths pull.

I know, I'm just stating that was what he was referring to.

Btw you deserve a custom title for the pics you find.

Now that's something I can get behind!

 

[TheVrolok]

The shards are too close to his heart and would kill him.

Couldn't he just get a new heart?

 

[her209]

No. Its wrong because its simply wrong, Its a fact.

I guess you get the honor of telling NASA they are providing misinformation.
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/what-is-aerodynamics-58.html

 

[NikolaeVarius]

I guess you get the honor of telling NASA they are providing misinformation.
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/what-is-aerodynamics-58.html

That link doesn't mentioned the bernoulli's effect. It offers an extremely simple version of lift for public mass consumption which doesn't involve bernoulli's, and all it is, is equations and a extremely bottom of the barrel explanation of lift that doesn't get into the details of what is happening.

And even if it DID, there would be an asterisk saying that bernoulli's principle is not a recognized way of describing lift and it is used either erroneously, or to give a easy to understand but wrong description of what causes lift.


From the Wiki.
Bernoulli's principle does not explain why the air flows faster over the top of the wing; to explain that requires some other physical reasoning.[43] It is in providing that additional reasoning where some explanations oversimplify things.


Limitations of explanations based on Bernoulli's principle

• The explanation above does not explain why the streamtubes change size. To see why the air flows the way it does requires more sophisticated analysis.[46][47]

• Sometimes a geometrical argument is offered to demonstrate why the streamtubes change size: it is asserted that the top "obstructs" or "constricts" the air more than the bottom, hence narrower streamtubes. For conventional wings that are flat on the bottom and curved on top this makes some intuitive sense. But it does not explain how flat plates, symmetric airfoils, sailboat sails, or conventional airfoils flying upside down can generate lift, and attempts to calculate lift based on the amount of constriction do not predict experimental results.[48][49][50][51]

• In deriving Bernoulli's principle, assumptions may be made (such as constant energy or incompressible flow) that are not applicable to real-world airfoils. For instance, a sailboat that is accelerating is removing energy from the flow while an airplane in level flight is adding energy to the flow, so energy is not constant. For high speed aircraft moving at transonic speeds the effects of incompressibility can't be neglected.[52][53][54]

• A common explanation using Bernoulli's principle asserts that the air must traverse both the top and bottom in the same amount of time and that this explains the increased speed on the (longer) top side of the wing. But this assertion is false; it is typically the case that the air parcels traveling over the upper surface will reach the trailing edge before those traveling over the bottom.[55]

Bernoulli's is not the reason lift exists. Lift is a combination of many many different factors and have many different explanations of what happens including stuff like vortices, end effects, balance of forces, separation, etc etc. So please enlighten us on your simple easy to use understanding of lift that no one in the entire world knows about.

 

[SandEagle]

i'd like to see a superhero movie where the superhero dies in the first 5 minutes and the rest of the movie is about WTF just happened.

they did. its called The Avengers. the whole movie was dead to me in 5 minutes. i tried staying awake the rest of the movie and was like WTF is this crap?

the only physics fail is that more people didnt hurt their necks at a 45 degree angle falling asleep watching this movie.

 

[her209]

That link doesn't mentioned the bernoulli's effect. It offers an extremely simple version of lift for public mass consumption which doesn't involve bernoulli's, and all it is, is equations and a extremely bottom of the barrel explanation of lift that doesn't get into the details of what is happening.

And even if it DID, there would be an asterisk saying that bernoulli's principle is not a recognized way of describing lift and it is used either erroneously, or to give a easy to understand but wrong description of what causes lift.


From the Wiki.
Bernoulli's principle does not explain why the air flows faster over the top of the wing; to explain that requires some other physical reasoning.[43] It is in providing that additional reasoning where some explanations oversimplify things.


Limitations of explanations based on Bernoulli's principle

• The explanation above does not explain why the streamtubes change size. To see why the air flows the way it does requires more sophisticated analysis.[46][47]

• Sometimes a geometrical argument is offered to demonstrate why the streamtubes change size: it is asserted that the top "obstructs" or "constricts" the air more than the bottom, hence narrower streamtubes. For conventional wings that are flat on the bottom and curved on top this makes some intuitive sense. But it does not explain how flat plates, symmetric airfoils, sailboat sails, or conventional airfoils flying upside down can generate lift, and attempts to calculate lift based on the amount of constriction do not predict experimental results.[48][49][50][51]

• In deriving Bernoulli's principle, assumptions may be made (such as constant energy or incompressible flow) that are not applicable to real-world airfoils. For instance, a sailboat that is accelerating is removing energy from the flow while an airplane in level flight is adding energy to the flow, so energy is not constant. For high speed aircraft moving at transonic speeds the effects of incompressibility can't be neglected.[52][53][54]

• A common explanation using Bernoulli's principle asserts that the air must traverse both the top and bottom in the same amount of time and that this explains the increased speed on the (longer) top side of the wing. But this assertion is false; it is typically the case that the air parcels traveling over the upper surface will reach the trailing edge before those traveling over the bottom.[55]

Bernoulli's is not the reason lift exists. Lift is a combination of many many different factors and have many different explanations of what happens including stuff like vortices, end effects, balance of forces, separation, etc etc. So please enlighten us on your simple easy to use understanding of lift that no one in the entire world knows about.

From your own source:

"Popular" explanation based on equal transit-time
An illustration of the (incorrect) equal transit-time theory

An explanation of lift frequently encountered in basic or popular sources is the equal transit-time theory. Equal transit-time states that because of the longer path of the upper surface of an airfoil, the air going over the top must go faster in order to catch up with the air flowing around the bottom, i.e. the parcels of air that are divided at the leading edge and travel above and below an airfoil must rejoin when they reach the trailing edge. Bernoulli's Principle is then cited to conclude that since the air moves faster on the top of the wing the air pressure must be lower. This pressure difference pushes the wing up.[71]

However, equal transit time is not accurate[72][73][74] and the fact that this is not generally the case can be readily observed.[75][76] Although it is true that the air moving over the top of a wing generating lift does move faster, there is no requirement for equal transit time. In fact the air moving over the top of an airfoil generating lift moves much faster than the equal transit theory would imply.[77]

The assertion that the air must arrive simultaneously at the trailing edge is sometimes referred to as the "Equal Transit-Time Fallacy".[78][79][80][81]

While this theory depends on Bernoulli's principle, the fact that this theory has been discredited does not imply that Bernoulli's principle is incorrect.

Also, decades of engineers designing to maximize the BE is wrong because you say so. Hilarious!

 

[gorcorps]

this thread is sad

 

[NikolaeVarius]

From your own source:



Also, decades of engineers designing to maximize the BE is wrong because you say so. Hilarious!

Yeah. Your little section says that the Bernoulli's principle itself is correct, not that its correct in describing lift, no one disputes that the principle is incorrect. The parts that you highlight don't mean anything in the context of the argument because it is an argument against using Bernoulli's to calculate lift

The fact that Bernoulli's equation is not a comprehensive description of flight and the theory of using Bernoulli's equations do not correspond to real life in many scenarios. The fundamental assumptions for lift using bernoulli's is flawed. There are in fact pressure differences that can be calculated using bernoulli's equation on the top and bottom of the airfoil. However, that does not mean it is a correct way to describe lift.

Also, I'm a 4th year aero-engineer. You are not. So its not like I'm pulling facts out of my ass. I've seen dozens of different ways of attempting to describe lift analytically and experimentally. There is much dispute over a comprehensive way to describe lift. So please, stop posting about a subject you have NO IDEA about. I dislike using wiki because it leaves out much detail on what actually goes into lift, but its the only way to get simple information to you.

 

[Baked]

How powerful is Loke? He was able to pickup the cosmic cube, but the red face guy in captain america totally got owned when he touched it.

 

[Borkil]

I guess it all depends whether gravity could go through a portal. I'm assuming it can

Here's a graph from wiki that shows the strength of gravity vs distance from earth

 

[Paratus]

So with energy numbers we looked at earlier in the thread I decided if I could figure out what type of energy an Arc reactors was using.

I made the following assumptions based on the Mark I chest piece:

1) Total energy was 750Megawatt Hours based on Starks comments about 3 GJ/s and running for 15 minutes.

2) Based on the movie the chest piece is about a half cup in volume.

3) Most of that volume is taken up by the device. Fuel accounts for less than 1% of the total volume based on the scenes where he's building the device.

4) The device converts energy with over 99% efficiency. Based in the fact he'd spontaneously combust if it was producing a bunch of waste heat.

So calculating the energy density of the device gives us a range from 2.28 x 10^9 MJ/L - 2.28 x 10^10 MJ/L which according to Wikipedia puts us around deuterium tritium fusion.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

So with energy numbers we looked at earlier in the thread I decided if I could figure out what type of energy an Arc reactors was using.

I made the following assumptions based on the Mark I chest piece:

1) Total energy was 750Megawatt Hours based on Starks comments about 3 GJ/s and running for 15 minutes.

2) Based on the movie the chest piece is about a half cup in volume.

3) Most of that volume is taken up by the device. Fuel accounts for less than 1% of the total volume based on the scenes where he's building the device.

4) The device converts energy with over 99% efficiency. Based in the fact he'd spontaneously combust if it was producing a bunch of waste heat.

So calculating the energy density of the device gives us a range from 2.28 x 10^9 MJ/L - 2.28 x 10^10 MJ/L which according to Wikipedia puts us around deuterium tritium fusion.

Well, it does look like fusion considering that the arc reactor looks almost exactly like a tokamak with the swirling plasma.

But its supposed to be a extension of the energy that powers asgard. Howard Start started work to try and harness asgardian energy but was limited by the lack of advanced materials and elements to replicate it. This was the reason why when IM was hit by Thors lightning, it supercharged him. He runs off a man made version of that same energy.

How powerful is Loke? He was able to pickup the cosmic cube, but the red face guy in captain america totally got owned when he touched it.

He's a god, not a human. Thor was 1v1'ing Iron Man pretty easily. Loki can keep up with Thor so hes clearly very stron.

Also, he has knowledge of the Cube that the red skull didn't.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Accidental double post

 

[Northern Lawn]

No, if the shuttle went straight up, it would escape Earth and fly out into space.

If you drop a bullet at the same time you fired a bullet, which one hits the ground first?

But what if it blows up before it gets there?

YA! your'e not the only one that watches star trek.