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Science Monday, February 25th 2013 at 2:30 pm

Students Write Paper On Physics of Spider-Man 2′s Train Stop Scene

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Geeks like to argue about things. After seeing Spider-Man 2 back in 2004, my friend and I got into a heated argument over whether or not the big train-stopping scene was possible. Would the webs hold up? Is Spidey’s grip strong enough to hold the webs? Would his arms get ripped off? What about all the things he’s shooting webs onto, would they hold up? Rather than argue over Chinese food like we did, some students at the University of Leicester actually used physics to settle the debate once and for all, and they published their results.

According to James Forster, Mark Bryan, and Alex Stone the numbers add up, and Spider-Man would have been able to stop the train. Their argument was a little more detailed than mine, which consisted of me repeatedly falling back on “Yeah, but he’s Spider-Man, so it would probably work.”

To start, they had to calculate the total force it would take to stop the moving train, which they did by determining the train’s momentum and the time it took to stop the train from when Spider-Man attaches the first web. They calculated the train’s momentum assuming its four cars were traveling at full speed and at full capacity. The students determined the force of the webs to stop the train was 300,000 newtons.

The stiffness of the webs during the train stop would be 3.13 gigapascals, which is well within the capabilities of webs seen in orb-weaving spiders, which can range from 1.5 to 12 gigapascals. What also correlates to real world spiders is the toughness of Spider-Man’s webs, which would have to be 500 megajoules per cubic meter. The strongest known real world spider webs come from the Darwin Bark Spider, and those webs can handle that level of toughness.

It seems like the math adds up to show that Spidey’s webs are indeed strong enough to stop that train. The paper, titled Doing whatever a spider can, does not address the issue of Spider-Man himself being strong enough to hold on to the webs, or whether there were enough points of contact to disperse the force evenly enough to not tear down the buildings, but come on — he’s Spider-Man, so it would probably work.

(Journal of Special Topics, image via Spider-Man 2)

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  • Jack Bond

    He would be super strong. He can fling his entire weight up a wall with very little effort. It might be a stretch, but I’m willing to bet it’s possible.

  • http://twitter.com/pickmeuproadie Brad Rissmiller

    MY biggest problem with saying it will work is not his strength itself, but the structural integrity of his body itself, particularly the arms. 300,000N is more than enough to rip arms clean off of a person. He doesn’t have the train itself attached to the webs, but rather his body inside of the train is taking all of the force.

  • Anonymous

    MYTHBUSTERS!

  • http://twitter.com/nachtritter Duke Fleed

    I remember this scene being mentioned in passing during the Science from Superhereos to Global Warming course on Coursera.

  • Jack Bond

    Maybe Leicester University should have tested something like that instead.

  • Superhero freak

    well the point was that his dna has been completely rewritten so I wouldn’t think it a stretch to assume that his bones and body are a lot tougher than they seem. also just assuming that his webs were organic and had to come from somewhere I’m guessing his bones or something probably has a layer of super strong webbing to hold them in place. I mean there are plenty of theories and he gets beaten pretty badly and never has broken bones even breaking through barbed wire like a thin layer of scotch tape

  • http://twitter.com/TweeterSmart b smart

    black dude from mad tv on the right

    UPS guy

  • bluelightzero

    he did not eat much between having no muscles then muscles. and he was not really fat. so where did his muscles come from?

    I cannot believe you are arguing physics on a spider man movie… well i can =D