Avengers #25 preview

[sherkahn]

One page from #25, courtesy of ComicBookResources.com






That's Captain America trying to punch Magneto??!
WTF?

And the art... this is THE Walt Simonson?

Comments

[liara_shadowsong]

Or just, y'know, straightjacket him with his scalemail armor. I'm pretty sure that's made of metal. I mean, if could be some sort of ceramic armor, but even then there are probably some sort of metal components somewhere in it. (the idea of an EM-path being able to control iron in blood is kind of waaay outside my range of suspension of disbelief; at that point, they'd be better off just reaching for buried sewer lines to attack with like Static did in one of the episodes of his cartoon series, which just makes more sense, imho)

[spacebetween]

Not all metal is magnetic. The main magnetic metals (ferromagnetic) are iron, nickel and cobalt. Some, but not all of the alloys from those three are magnetic.

Other metals can hold a slight magnetic charge but nowhere to the same extent as the first three. While others are completely unaffected by magnetic forces.

Finally some metals can have their magnetic properties changed by heating or cooling them, but that is a different ball of science which can be confusing and tricky.

[liara_shadowsong]

I'm aware of that. Although that is a very nice summary. And yet, comic book science often does not work like real life science.

Either way, iron and nickel are fairly common amongst everyday metal alloys, even if they are not present in every metallic product in existence. (Steve's armor is probably more likely to be predominantly ceramic than predominantly non-magnetic metal, even if he was expecting to face Magneto.) So it's not outside the realm of possibility for there to be some on one's person or in the surroundings (okay, fine, sewer pipes were a bad example since I think a lot of those are mostly PVC now, but the point still remains that there's probably some magnetic metal in the surrounding environment, even if it's not immediately obvious). Whereas the amount of iron in an entire human body is only about three or four grams, relative to the total mass on the order of perhaps a hundred kilograms - 4g/100,000g = 1/25000 or 0.004%, which is an overall concentration (yes, I know there is more in the blood than elsewhere, but it's still not that high of a concentration, and it's not like it's just freely floating around, it's tied up in hemoglobin in red blood cells then, which means extra energy would have to be exerted to break the chemical bonds, I expect, or to pull the entire red blood cells out of the body, fyi ew) that I just can't see an EM-path realistically being able to take advantage of very well, comic book science aside.

Also, semiconductors and superconductors are fun. :D

[spacebetween]

Heh sorry it was the science geek in me. While I'm not too strong on the chemistry side of science I do have a grip on. It was surprising to see what was magnetic and what wasn't. I remember one alloy in this experiment was about 70% iron and two other metals and you would assume it would be magnetic, but surprisingly it wasn't.

While I do enjoy comics, some of the science does make me cringe. But you can always tell which writers do some research on something science based that is found in the real world.

Semiconductors and Superconductors are fun as personal study, but when you have exams or assignments on them you start to rethink why you even took the course.

[liara_shadowsong]

No need to be sorry! I'm a lot of a science geek too, I just gave up a while back on trying to make comic book and real life science match up properly. At this point, I'm just assuming that the Marvel universe uses even more magnetic metal alloys than the real world does, to explain how extensively Magneto's powers work. I would love to do more experiments with magnetism, but it's just not really an option right now (and I'm afraid my knowledge of alloys isn't really all that fantastic, I have much more experience with things that are more biologically applicable - which, luckily, is serving me quite well in my current studies).

Once in a while, I just have to give up on a comic book or movie or tv show, because the science is so bad that I can't even maintain suspension of disbelief any more. Honestly, that's probably one of the reasons that I tend to gravitate towards fictional worlds with magic in them, because at least then there's a reason for the laws of physics to apparently have loopholes. (I love when writers do their scientific research!)

Yeah... as interesting as semiconductors and superconductors are, graded work regarding them can't really be described in any way besides nervewracking. Same goes for optics, imho, the stuff my club got to demo at a local junior high was really cool (I got to demonstrate chirality with a giant graduated cylinder full of corn syrup, a light source with a polarizer, and a screen to show the pretty rainbows that resulted), and lenses are just plain fascinating, but the calculations I had to do for the later exams nearly drove me to tears despite my relatively strong calculus background.