A pretty big oversight made was that Spider-Man isn't bringing the subway to a sudden stop but to a gradual stop. The idea being to use his web lines as a brake to slow the train down possiblely letting the first set of lines snap and allowing the second set to take over the load barring. All of this would allow the momentum of the train to be lost in stages and also to reduce the Olympian amount of strain on his body. Love the show and hope I can get on footnotes one day.
I know this is super late, but I completely agree, I also don't think he accounted for Spiderman himself, we know he has super strength, and was using his feet to slow the train down as well.
@@olivertunnah3987 yeah i see your point, but what if, say they saw Peter on the street and thought "Hey that's the guy who saved us, maybe I should keep his identity a secret."
Well back then taking out your phone and start video taping was not that popular...if the train scene happens today you know some people are gonna do it lol
You assume that the train actually reaches 80mph, but a quick google search reveals that most New York trains only have a top speed of 55mph. Due to safety regulations, there isn't just a lever that allows you to push the train to 80mph. I ran the numbers and it brings the energy down to 83,520,000 J, Just about 1/4th the amount you calculated. Which should make it significantly easier to stop a train using 'normal' spider silk.
You also need to calculate in that he nearly broke his leg, breaking wooden crossbeams for a couple of blocks. He also broke two buildings before using the multiple strands at once. so we know that a single strand can pull the side of a brick building off before breaking.
Kyle also assumed that every car was full. While that's probably true for a few of the cars, we actually see inside a few times and they're not actually to full capacity. If you decreased the numbers by 10% and went a little lower in the weight scale (there were children on the train), that would also bring down the energy.
All true, but he also crunched numbers on the assumption that the train was coasting, which was not the case. The energy goes back up quite a bit with the continual forward momentum the engine is producing.
He did get it down to 4 strands, so if it's typically ¼ like you say then it would be plausible, and that's not even considering that the car is likely not full.
I rewatched the train scene and noticed a few things that could have helped Spidey out 1) He tries slowing it down with his feet first, breaking a ton of the wooden beams on the track 2) He tries using only a couple webs first before he does the many webs thing and this tears out the sides of a few buildings 3) The train totally destroys the iron safety stopper at the end of the track All of these together (along with Spidey pulling) might have helped slow the train down JUST enough
The "web ropes" may be pencil wide but they are composed of smaller web fibers so this should greatly increase their strength. Kind of like how ropes and strings that humans make work.
Kyle, you said he stops the train just using spider silk, but don't forget that he may have decelerated the train with his own feet against several beams of wood prior to using the silk. Plus the train smashes through a barrier at the end of the track.
Yeah, let's just ignore what would happen to any realistic physical model of a human in all of this. I'm curious to know whether the forces on his arms would be sufficient to tear them off, even augmenting the values a bit for super humans, in the context of real world physics.
But also some webs didn't reach their full size (less expansion, less kinectic energy absorbed) and others ripped off some parts of the city, reducing the effects of those webs on the deceleration of the train.
And didn’t he try twice to stop the train? I distinctly remember him having try, reattach more silk. That would have slowed the train and changed the formula, right?? GET AT ME KYLE, I want to know!
It's hard to see in the movie clip, but in the comic Spider Man's silk is actually many strands braided together into a silk rope. Braiding the rope instead of attaching many separate strands across two points will distribute the load much better. Using multiple attachments will likely mean that some strands have a shorter effective length than others and those strands will be under more stress. That method essentially builds in weak points. Braiding negates this problem almost entirely. (I do concede that there are stress points introduced because of the braid, but those are nearly negligible in comparison to the stresses in a multiple-strand arrangement). As the rope nears it's breaking point, weaker fibers with flaws will begin to fail. Say one fiber in a rope breaks under tension, so it isn't supporting the load anymore. At a sufficient distance from the break along that fiber, the friction with neighboring fibers is sufficient to exert the same tension on it as all the other fibers. So even though that flaw has caused damage at its point along the rope, the rest of the rope is unaffected. It's a remedy to the weakest-link of a chain problem. I don't have numbers for the value for the braiding advantage, but if it approaches 4, Spider Man could stop the train.
The numbers he used assumed perfect load distribution for all lines. (IE ignored more complicated bits of physics because they're not usually needed unless the back of the envelope calculation shows it's feasible)
Okay, quick follow-up, though: If he did stop the train with the "supernaturally tough mutant silk", would the train's structure hold up with the pressure of Spider Man's body mashing up against it? Like, at the rate of deceleration we see, would the train's front be able to withstand the force as dispersed across the area of contact with Spider Man's body, or would he punch through, resulting in the only resistance being applied to the threads themselves, and basically not so much stopping the train as turning it into a runaway convertible? Also, if we're stopping a train with silk anchored to buildings, would the brick to which the webs are attached be strong enough as anchors? Or would it just rip a chunk out and whap around through traffic like that one scene of Spiderverse?
In the 1960's bricks and mortar might have held more than today. That was, as my electrician brother in law said, "when concrete was real concrete." And a building's strength applies against the weather and other stresses that are common to it. I think that if he aimed lower toward the bottoms of buildings, the foundation and foot of each building could help stabilize the webs more securely, too, like holding a handful of spaghetti. One hand is the foundation and the long ends of sticks are the towers. Hold the spaghetti at the far end and the spaghetti snaps immediately. Hold the spaghetti near the foundation (the other hand) and it takes much more force to break the spaghetti. In fact, don't those who prefer shortened spaghetti break it with hands together to prevent strands from flying across the kitchen? It stabilizes the bunch of spaghetti.
I think the main problems with it aren't the web assumptions, it's the speed and weight assumptions. Even though the train is supposed to be going 80 mph, the max speed possible without derailing for a NYC subway car is 24.6 m/s(55mph) in modern day cars (Source:MTA), that have been in use since 2006, which is around the same time. (SM2 is 2004, but for the sake of argument lets give a little upper hand) Also, because of the amount of light on the buildings in the scenes during the fight and during the train stop, and accounting the time of the year, I would place this incident happening in mid May, so the amount of sunlight suggests that its close to 7:30pm. According to the MTA statistics, the amount of people going southbound in Manhattan at the time in that time of the year is about 35%, (330 people in 6 subway cars) and if it was Westbound towards the Hudson, that number is only 13%, (105 people in 6 subway cars) That would affect the additional weight, making it easier to stop the train with normal condition spider web. Please let me know what the math comes up to then, thanks for reading. PS. Kyle, you rock ✊✊
You have my vote for SuperNerd on the correction side of footnotes. Though I disagree on the 55 mph statement. The top safe service speed is 55 mph. But Doc Oc didn’t put it at max safe service speed. He put it at max speed without care of safety. Which google tells me is 80 mph. (I’m not a train expert)
Also the calculation didn't consider the energy loss through friction with the rail (in this situation, it would be probably a lot higher than usual) and wether or not the motor of the vehicule is running and producing work. And like superman catching a plane, the front of the cars aren't designed to support a force capable of stopping the train so Spidey would probably go through the cars cutting it in two.
@@NinjaBearFilms I believe 55 mph is the maximum it can go without derailing, and seeing how the train didn't derail itself in the movie, we can, therefore, assume that it was moving within that speed limit.
Even if the web is strong enough, and Spiderman's arms don't get pulled apart, wouldn't the brick/concrete material that the webs connect to be ripped out from the surrounding walls? (ie wouldn't they be ripping out chunks of the wall with the train pulling on them?)
@@brefasdra Exactly what I was thinking, even multiplying the amount of web used by 8x (and thus reducing individual force on each connection by the same) compared to this part I highly doubt it would be enough to avoid ripping bricks and windows out of buildings.
Well let's think about this: We obviously know that Spider-Man was given super human strength, but he also has to maintain how powerful his punches are or his grip on his webs when it comes to fighting crime, web swinging, or grabbing an object to throw at an enemy. Now you can say that the bricks can break off, but he would have to maintain his strength of keeping the webs together before having the bricks on verge of breaking. I might be wrong about this statement, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Another top quality Because Science 👌 Thanks Kyle, for working so hard on making these videos, as well as footnotes, livestreams and the Mortal Kombat videos! They're all really fun and interesting to watch and really helpful for learning more about science. It must be difficult to be so energetic and spend so much time on your work and I really appreciate it. Also, thanks to Nate, Pan, the MK Minions and all the other behind the scenes crew that make Because Science possible as well!
Spider-Man would simply be ripped in half. Just having super strength doesn’t mean you could withstand the force of an entire train. Also, in this incarnation of spider man, doesn’t the continual use of multiple long strands of spider silk drain Spider-Man of vital mass and nutrients instantly, being that his body produces the silk as opposed to mechanical silk shooters? There’s no way his body could produce that much silk without losing a ton of mass over a fairly short period of time. Dude would need to be snacking constantly! Speaking of...in the void, what kind of snacks are there? Anything good? I’m a snacky guy so I know the importance of variety.
i'm pretty sure spiderman has taken a beating or 2 from the likes of rhino, the thing and hulk and has survived being rammed though buildings so his durability shouldn't be at question
Couple of things to note. 1. Spidermans webs aren't stopping the train instantly. 2. spiderman tried like twice to stop it before hand. Something very important about the SECOND time. He fires off 1 Web hand each. But holds onto 7/10 webs PER hand(it doesn't focus in for me to see clearly). That maths out around.... yep. 14/20 web lines in 2 casts. 3. it slams into a stopper at the end. 4. spiderman is still holding on as the train is going off the rails forward over the hole, and as such is exerting tension forces redirecting some of the energy at the end downward, which should increase friction. 5. Spidermans webs are very small strands, woven around a main line in hand. This increases surface area without increasing area. 6. Strands actively break multiple times throughout, diverting large amounts of energy. 7. Spidermans first usage of webs was 1 cast per hand, but he was holding onto like 6 or 7 lines of web in each hand after the first usage. He then uses 10 webs per side, each side being 7/10 each, means he uses over 100 or 70 lines of web. Again inferencing the SECOND scene, again for the number of total webs PER shot, 10 shots per hand. The buildings and metal he attaches them to also bend and break and shatter and the webs bend and break. Wow thats tons of information. So theoretically. If we take option 2. The fact that EACH fling of web, generates 7 to 10 lines of web per fling, AND he objectively launches 8 to 10 flings PER hand. He gets 112 to 200 Lines of web... yeah. Tobby stopped the train JUST fine. But he may have crushed all those poor webs into some super strong putty somehow. I did infact just go back and look at the video. I did count the webs in his hand on scene 2 as he fell forward and caught himself. I did use that to then calculate as the train is pulling forward how many lines he would have, and I did get the absurdly large number of webs you see in the math. He REALLY did have a ridiculous amount of web.
If you calculate the width as 2^.75 (1.682) times your assumption and the toughness as 2^.5 (1.414) times the toughest known spider silk, then it works out to exactly 1. Yes, this still puts the amount of silk he has to hold on to as a bit high, and yes it is still quite a bit stronger than any real-world silk, but it finds a balance between insane strength and insane volume, making it more plausible than simply amping up either one of those variables. Besides, we're talking about Spider-man here - I think he can handle it.
@@HexenkoeniginVonAngmar What I was saying was that the spider silk is stronger than the materials the building is made of so therefore would break before the spidersilk
Yeah, if we think about it, Spider-Man was bitten by a new kind of spider, it wasn't nor, every ability that a spider has Spider-Man gets and the abilities are stronger than ever
Kyle, I've been watching Because Science ever since your earliest marvel theories (such as moving Mjolnir in space, thor flying, etc.) and I gotta say that this has made me love science fiction and science in general. Recently though I've been playing a popular game I think you'd like called Subnautica, a very science-based game in the near distant future where your character is stranded on a mostly-oceanic planet as one of the only survivors of a space ship crash, and in the game one of your earliest tools of survival is called The Fabricator, which is a machine that can take surrounding elements and items (from your inventory) and make something else out of them, be it complicated, finished machines or other materials. My question is this: would this machine be safe enough to use in a close range (like inside an escape pod), and how close are we to making a machine like this right now? Or is it just simply fiction entirely? Keep up the great work!
If you been living 30000 years ago computer would be impossible... So I wouldn't rule it out. I guess it be a 3d printer thing of some sorts, that fits in your hand or it have to be like a nano bot thing. very trick in deeded assuming on what you were thinking of fabricating. And it being made in a confined space could have simple and obvious limitations
You missed several hidden variables. 1. The web lines are not placed simultaneously. The entire process works like one giant rubberband. Energy loss calculation requires integral equations. 2. The train, actually impacts a device designed to stop it at the end of the line. Without it, the train would have never stopped. 3. There is some energy transfer into the train's hull, as Spidey's body crushes it.
The thing I always wondered about the train fight was the toss where Doc Octavius throws spider-man up, and then Spider-Man comes back down to hit Doc Oc from behind. Often labeled as impossible event for him to be hit from behind. But I always figured the loss of speed going up and the increase speed coming down could maybe make it possible. My initial thought was to use the time he was in the air, and how high he was tossed, but I couldn’t get a clear height reference and the camera work seems like they use slow-motion for parts of it, so airtime is difficult to estimate. So instead I pulled up parabolic motion formulas to determine a reasonable throw that could result in what we see. If Doc Oc throws Spider-Man at 59.3 mph launching him at a 19° angle. Spider-Man would achieve a max height of 12.8 feet (seems reasonable from the scene) would be in the air for 1.76 seconds and travel 144.7 feet. The average service speed of the train used in the film is 55 mph or about 80 2/3 feet per second. So in 1.76 seconds he would travel 142 feet. So at that speed and angle Spider man would travel up, come back down behind Doc Oc and have enough distance/momentum to knock him down and back. Which closely matches what we see in the film. But I can’t figure out the relative speed issue. Since they both start at 55 mph, would Doc Oc only need to add 4.3 mph to Spider-Man’s speed to achieve this result? Or is there another formula that I’m missing to account for them having the same starting speed before the toss? Thank you for inspiring us to look at our favorite things in new nerdy ways.
NinjaBearFilms Cracked talked about this a few years ago; he’s moving laterally with the train and being thrown forward toward the bridge, so it’s completely impossible to end up behind Ock unless he’s teleporting or violating physics 😄
Harsh Ch it’s possible but since the fight hadn’t progressed to the driver’s compartment yet I’d imagine the train would be at normal speed with no or negative acceleration 🙂
You clearly wasted your time on this. It's obvious that if you throw anything, and that too obliquely, from an object in motion such as a train(with almost any non zero velocity), it can never land on the same spot you threw it from, much less behind. Even Spiderman doesn't defy the laws of classical physics. Unless he quantum tunneled or something..
2 Things: 1.: Even if spider silk would be tough enough to withstand the forces, the train, the houses the silk sticks on or Peter Parkers Body would break/get ripped apart. 2.: If the train isn't accelerating anymore it would also get slower because of the rails scratching on it, and i believe that also some breaks are used to stop the train, so the silk wouldn't have to be as tough. Sorry if I did language mistakes (english is not my native language). Ps: Love the show
For your second point, I use a train to commute and learned that metal on metal friction is very low. It takes energy for a train to speed up/slow down but far less to keep going at its current speed. It's why trains can be so efficient and haul a line of box cars a mile long on surprisingly little fuel. Unless someone turned on the brakes, it takes a train a ver long time to coast to a stop.
@@Alverant I see your point and I agree, but I believe that someone would use the (emergency-) brakes in such a situation, so I think you should also consider this
@@Alverant in the movie you can literally see sparks coming out and hear loud noises because of the friction. Doc Ock broke something to make the train go faster than intended, possibly breaking some other parts of the train because of this, and increasing the friction.
Didn't Doc Ock put the train into full throttle and break the controls before jumping off? In that case, Spidey has a lot more than just the train's momentum to deal with, he also has the power from the electric drive motors trying to keep the train moving. If that's the case, then I think a much better thing for smart-boy Peter Parker to do is A) figure out how to disable the motors (i.e. by ripping out wires) and B) apply the brakes (most modern trains have braking systems with redundancies and failsafes; even if the driver is disabled and controls are destroyed, there should be a way to get the brakes to activate). In any case, I also wonder if the front of the train is strong enough for Spidey to stop it like he did in the movie. We see metal bending a little and windows breaking, but with that much force applied to such a small area I think it's more realistic for the webbing to slice the train in half on a horizontal plane like a cheese wire. Anyway, Kyle, I love the show and am hoping to get into BS Footnotes some day!
Kyle did say right at the end that the calculations were based on the purposeful assumption that the train was merely coasting, and not under (ahem) locomotive power.
from what I understand the train is electric and the motor gets it power from a 3rd rail. so once the track is destroyed or the train is derailed the motor will stop.
@@psionx1 That's correct. But by the time the train has gone off the end of the rails and the motors are unpowered, it's too late. If I were Spider Man, the first thing I'd do as soon as Doc Ock leaves is to rip up some floor panels (super strength, remember) and pull the wires that connect to the motors. I'm not sure what kind of braking systems that particular train has, but I'm pretty familiar with the Westinghouse air brake design. Bascially, a line connecting all cars on the train is normally kept pressurized, and a reduction in pressure causes application of the brakes. So, all he'd need to do to apply brakes is punch a hole in the pipe somewhere.
it's not too late. as it is possible to derail the train in a way that will cause it too slide along the track. it will be a bumpy ride but it should stop more or less safely as long as the track dosn't have any curves for about a mile or 2. also the chance exists that the breaks snap or get worn down to nothing by the combination of the trains forward momentum and the motor still running full blast. the safest thing you can do is try to hot-wire the control panel.
Thank you Kyle for your humour and these videos, was feeling super down today after a rough breakup and watching your videos always make me laugh and feel better. You’re amazing keep doing what you’re doing!
The problem I imagine this scenario would have in real life is that while the webs are spread throught multiple buildings they all converge on Spider-Man's hands, so all the force is exherted on a relatively small area, just the webs, his arms, shoulders and upper back. Even if we assume his superpowers enable him to withstand it without being torn appart, the train cart is certainly not made out of supermaterials, and it would probably end up splitting it in half from the stress put onto it by Parker
Another fun factor to consider is the weave structure of Spidey's web ropes. He might not only have stronger silk than any spider in nature, but also, in scaling a spider web up to human size, the silk strands might weave together in ways never before seen that further increase its effective toughness.
THIS this is what i was thinking through most of the video, any time we get a close up we see the shape of the webbing isnt like a single strand and weaving it together massively increases its toughness, even where he points out the multiple points of contact you can see those are multistrand too
@@tetsuyakenshi It considers the volume, yes, but not the structure, that's my point. I realize the formula is an approximation that basically assumes the web is a single uniform consistency, but it doesn't take into account the ways in which the multiple strands are woven together, which can considerably change how it behaves. That's why I used the phrase 'effective toughness.'
Sam Raimi's Spider-Man doesn't have synthetic webbing though. It's never explained but Peter is not mixing a potion like Tom Holland. The webbing comes naturally. Couldn't you calculate the tensile strength of webbing for an actual spider and just change the mass of the "spider", in this case, to match the mass of Peter Parker? If a tiny spider has super strong webbing, then it can be assumed that with a mass the size of Spider-Man, the webbing should most definitely be strong enough. Love the show Kyle. I'm so jealous of those lovely locks.
Hey kyle, thank's for all the science and laughs you've given me over the years, I watched these videos so much that when I started my first physics class I knew almost all of the equations just from watching you over the years
Hello Kyle. Good job but a few corrections - 1. Spiderman first used his legs to slow the train down. Then uses two webs to slow it down even further. (Assuming the train doesnt accelerate back to 80mph cz the train does not accelerate at the end after it comes to a stop.) 2. Right before it comes to a stop, it hits a barricade and then the front wheels go off the rails causing the under part of the train to slide on the rails causing frictional resistance. This means the initial and final velocities that you used are not accurate and since KE changes with square of velocity, i think it would make a considerable difference. And yea, Spiderman's web is much stronger than any ordinary spider silk because it genetically modified, radioactive and a hybrid with human DNA. Love the show though!
wouldn't another factor be the time it took to stop i could be missing something but this equation seem to just be shier force to stop it not gradual deceleration which would make it dramatically easier to stop as time went on
If they tensile strength of spider silk exceeds that of steel, wouldn't have Spider-man just ended up bifurcating the entire train horizontally? Thus killing all the passengers in the same manner as the rope, snap-back scene from the movie Ghost Ship. Great show Kyle; see you on footnotes.
@@whirledpeaz5758 I was in the Navy. I got to watch many safety videos and that includes Line Separation (Snap-Back). If I remember correctly, Mythbusters even did an episode about it.
@@fozball1980 I guessed the objective was to stop the train by using multiple tensile lines to absorb the force. Almost like a pillow would do. So it isn't like using opposing force like Superman would. What I did think just now is that the heat produced by this actions shoud be absolutlely unbeareable for the materials around the train. Sorry, english as a second language.
The one factor I feel like a lot of people overlook in that scene is the strength of the buildings Spider-man is attaching the webs to... I'm not the best at math but I'm pretty sure that his webbing would have been ripping chunks out of the brickwork...
I noticed it looked like you used Peter's first attempt to slow the train, where he used an easily countable number of webs to try to slow down the train. However, even in the movie, that attempt failed. He then proceeded to shoot out a much larger number of ropes to finish the job of stopping the train, which would actually require less energy than before, due to it being slowed by his first attempt.
Yes, but you have to remember that in the first movie, the spiders were genetically enhanced. It's not a far-fetched idea to think that with great genetics comes great webbing. The genetic mutations of the spiders could have led to silk stronger than that found in nature. Besides, what you left out was the fact that several of his webs broke prior to the train actually stopping, meaning the remaining webbing took on greater strain.
its worth mentioning that the final 8 hes left with isnt the total he used several snapped along the way also which would help reduce the speed, i mean it wasnt 40 but it was still more lol
Eggs-zactly !!! I mean the man is not using normal silk to Webb his way around , this is webbing powerful enough to hold back supowered individuals, cars, and humongous projectiles so It would be safe to assume that it is strong enough to withstand a train.
Props to you Kyle for dealing with all these armchair scientists and physicists trying to second guess your work. I'm just impressed you did the background research to try and make an estimate. Thanks for entertaining us - you da man.
Yes, we can presume that Spidey's web is indeed tougher than anything than humanly tested. Even in the comic books, there has been numerous examples shown that, even though Spidey's web holds under enormous stress, that's not saying that the materials to which his webs are anchored break long before his webbing does. By Marvel canon (before Disney started mucking up everything), Spider-Man's webbing has been described as "tougher than piano wire." That may still be "selling it short," but that's still impressive. A different strategy that would have helped is if Spidey had laid down thick pads of webbing along the train *tracks* so that the stickiness would get drawn up in the wheels/axles & take up more of the stress than his web lines alone could have handled. But we didn't see him doing that in the movie, did we? In the (pre-Disney) Marvel canon, Spidey has brought speeding cars to a stop by just webbing the wheels to the pavement. He would spray down about 1" thick pad on the ground, just in front of each wheel. If Spidey had set a few webbing-pads in a *serial line along each track,* then this would have been more plausible.
I was thinking the same thing. I mean, not so much the air resistance but friction should play a much greater part. How would we calculate the work done by the e-brake to add that to Parker's precarious performance?
@@becausescience, sure, I've done the calculations. for steel μ=0,16 then if the web lines are 15m and they stretched up to 30m, the work done by de friction W=F*D=290000kg*0,16*30m=1,39 MJ negligible for the matter. The rolling friction coefficient is even lower 0,001-0,0002 so the result is null
When my brother was little and we used to watch these movies nonstop, he once turned to me and asked "so if a spider bites me can I become Spiderman?" Fast forward over a decade, I'm sitting in the theater with my cousins watching Captain Marvel and my cousin's 10 year old asks "so if I'm in an explosion can I get super powers?" Lol. Anyone else had to deal with kids asking this?
@@JacobDGoldman lol! It's true! When the movie was over I struggled so much not to immediately tell my brother u till after he saw it. I'm just curious if this is a regular occurrence or if it's just my awesomely weird family.
Great episode as always, I often think about that scene and have come to the conclusion that, beyond the strength of his silk, which, let's be honest, is great because he has radioactive blood, like many before have stated, it's more a problem of their stickiness vs the sheer toughness of the objects he attached to ie. The bricks, we even see earlier on in that scene, he shoots some webs out, and they rip the wall away, which leads to him putting out even more webs, which a, shows his quick thinking and ability to adapt, and b, shows that his webs are able to stick to and keep sticking to objects and withstanding the breaking point if bricks and concrete. P.S.(spoilers I guess for the new Spider-man Game) there is actually a very cool scene in it where you have to stop another rub away train, and we see Spider-man try to stop it with webs, it doesn't work and he comments how it worked last time, and then proceeds to attach the webs to the rails and then BENDS THEM UP THREW THE CEILING AND OUT ONTO THE STREET!!!! So uhhhh.....how?
I like the additional breakdown of assumptions and variables that you did in this one. There have been many cases where I don't totally agree with your assumptions but I don't know how much that one assumption or variable actually effects the ends result. Giving this broader answer and showing how much a variables or assumptions would need to change to give a certain result really puts everything else into perspective. I'd love to see you do it more.
More realistically he could hold into webs until they break and then shoot more. Then he doesn’t need insanely thick or tough webbing and doesn’t need to hold onto a bunch of webs at once.
Kyle, I love you and your show. It's so inspiring how readily you learn from the criticisms you've received in the past and are constantly using them to making the show better and better. This is easily my favorite science show on UA-cam and I hope your viewership can continue to grow,; so that more and more people can be exposed to this dank nerdery.
Spiderman's webbing was always portrayed as looking like a whole spiderweb in tube form, with cross stands wrapping around the long threads. Since these wraparound threads would connect to the strands, would that transfer some force to them from the strands and couldn't the wraparound thread provide some strength as well? Reminds me of the 1970's commercial about Goodyear's steel belted radial tires called 721 because they steel belts were seven strands around two strands wrapped by one strand. Now would they waste the extra steel to do that wrapping of each set of steel bands for every tire for millions of tires if wrapping didn't provide some virtue? Could it provide some extra strength or toughness to the web?
You factored all of the spider webbing strength and elasticity, but you should have also factored Peter's spider strength, that should factor on whether or not he would be able to stop the train.
This one is easy. It doesn't matter how strong Spider-Man's webbing is, or how securely it bonds to the anchoring structures. What matters is how much force it takes to tear the webbing out/off his spinnerets/web-spinners, and/or pull the web strands from his grip, and/or tear his arms out of their shoulder sockets.
And how strong the surface materials in the buildings are as well. Even the sturdiest brick and mortar would have a high compressive strength, but low tensile strength. Just like what happened the first time he tried it in the movie, all those other buildings would have had chunks ripped out.
the spider silk is not absorbing all of the kinetic energy, its also being transferred into spidermans upper body and the contacts points he's making on the train, hence the bending steel in the film and the ripping suit. Also you should probably calculate how sticky the silk is, I would assume it lets go of the walls before it breaks.
I have a feeling it's been brought up already, but assuming 1) the webbing is strong enough to stop the train, and 2) the forces involved DON'T rip him in half because super powers... The train still isn't going to stop because the web is just going to rip to walls down, or at least just rip large chunks out of them causing massive property damage and probably killing a bunch of people on the streets below. Good times!
Would the length of the spider lines matter, after they stretched? A NY train car is between 50 and 75 feet in length, depending on the model. It looks lie there are about 2-3 cars at the beginning of the clip.
Hey Kyle yet another spectacular video. I love to watch these while doing my biology homework to get the ol "subway" wheels rolling. I have been watching these for a few years now and it is always educating to learn about physics and mathematics when they are applied to something alot of pop culture fans such as I "gw-enjoy". Your show ignited my interests in sciences while I start my second year of high school and I assure you I will have many science related classes in the future. Keep up the amazing content. (!!ATTENTION!!) Two spiderman nods are located in this comment.
So, there's a Futurama episode where Fry says something to Leela about how global warming must've never happened. She responds that it did but nuclear winter cancelled it out. So, could it and how practical would nuclear winter be as a solution?
During the 90s and early 2000s there was a lot of dooms day suthsayers out there. Me and my friends often joked about them happening at once and canceling each other out.
I think Kyle mentioned something about nuclear winter in one of the old videos from the old channel. He also did a video about the global warming plus ice cube thing from a Futurama episode, but that wasn't the one I was talking about
It would be a stop gap at best. Since none of the Gases are taken out of the atmosphere. You make an Ice sphere surrounded by warming Gases. The Gases would eventually win out, and the planet would start to warm once again. Now if this mini ice age took out a significant portion of Humans, and Fossil Fuel production. Then over the long run of a thousand year with no more CO2 input from Humans. The planet would slowly recover, however if Humans did not learn from this, and continued to use Fossil Fuels they'd be right back to where they were before the bombs fell. To say nothing of the Radiation SALTED Land, Sea, and Air decimating any chance of humans wanting to live there for at least a few decades to a century or more.
All I could think about is Elastic Tow Straps... and how they FAIL because people secure them to bumper bars (which are bolted onto a frame) or the toe bars (which are also bolted and are greased) rather than the steel frame of the vehicle. Excluding the abilities of Spiderman and the weblines... the point of failure is the surface contact with the buildings. I don't even think most NYC buildings surfaces could support human weight, let alone his swinging motion. Bricks are structured to support the weight above it in an interlaced pattern, it is not a solid structural masse but a pressed/molded form of earthen clay held in place by a dried cement slurry that acts like glue. To be pulled on from that angle by a massive force is not possible without every web ripping out the brickwork. Even if it was a solid block of concrete it would stress fracture and rip off the surface layer of the cement/brick/masonry... thats also assuming its not a painted/coated surface and the web would just sheer the coating off the moment it pulls.
I agree with most of your statement, but what if the bricks in question had a network of some kind of secondary support structure, such as rubar beams? Would that not help add strength?
@@donaldlang1871 Add strength yes, but at the forces being applied the brick would be pulled against the rebar in a way it wasn't engineered for, the brick being mostly earthen clay/concrete would reach a breaking. I think to support the forces being applied the web really has to be anchored to an actual structural support thats one layer inside the wall or a material that can handle the stress (old timber frames would break too) but even then most engineering is built for tollerances to support a weight of a building and its natural environment... not the pulling force of a train at an obtuse angle.
Wow I recommended this video months ago. All I have to say is FINALLY! Also, what are your thoughts on Escanor's cruel sun? I mean vaporizing a lake and melting steel mere meters away seems impressive
At 0:39 it looks like Spider Man's bundle of silk lines is about the thickness of one of his fingers, which is about double the width of a pencil. Also it kinda looks like, instead of holding eight silk line ends, he's maybe attaching the last end to the next line with each line he shoots, and is kinda daisy-chaining them together. That might work. See ya in the Footnotes.
Why are so many people here confusing breaks with brakes? I mean, it would be understandable on a flat-earther channel, but here?! It's not even the same pronunciation.
He does slow the train with a few lines that snapped, and then throw extras, but taking into account the super spider that bit him had some 20 or so species mixed in, there is a likelihood he has a superwebbing. In the case where his webshooters aren't organic, we can't feasibly figure out how to test their strength without the science to make them. Unless we use the highly varied results we see in the shows and comics, like catching the space lander with the symbiote and JJJ Jr, or breaking against Rhino.
You forgot to account for the fact that he is digging his feet into the ground, leg pressing the train backward and shattering the tracks, absorbing more energy Spiderman’s leg strength should be even higher than his arm/grip strength here so there’s a chance it could make a massive difference
you did not mentionned anything about the deceleration provided by the friction of the train on the rail, the two first attempt, first by destroying almost two hundred sleepers, and then first by ripping the walls of two building with "not enough cables"
I think it's a bit more complicated than that and the strength of the silk alone is not the only factor. It's important to remember that a train is more or less just a thin-walled, hollow metal tube. If you're trying to stop it by only applying force to it's front and not the rigid frame, it would most likely cause Spider Man to rip a hole in the hull and go right through it. Oh and also the silk would start ripping bricks out of the buildings it's attached to long before that happens.
EDIT: At 50mph which is NYC limit in the 2200/2400 CTA cars it's 49211772.54J not 187,000,000J Just so you know, the weight you used was likely MTA's R160 line of subway cars. However, Spiderman 2 actually reached out to the Chicago L (CTA) and dressed up a 6 car train on their elevated tracks. This means they were using 2400 and 2200 cars with average out to around 22500kg, much less than the estimated 38000kg but unfortunately still too little of a difference to change the conclusion. Great video nonetheless!
This plus another comment that mentioned the average speed at which trains in manhattan travel, which is around 55 mph as supposed to the 80 mph that kyle used, could make enough difference to change the conclusion.
@@meowdy3444 that's true for the CTA in Chicago. But for the MTA in NYC it's 50mph, I'm an accident investigator for the MTA currently with Metro North. I've never worked in NYC, but 50mph is the limit in NYCT&SIR and that is not only the policy but if exceeded with or without accident an incident report is required to be filed by the engineers and contractor on duty and if it is deemed unnecessary endangerment an advancement is made on for their next physical and drug testing. So it's taken pretty seriously. So 2/3 the weight and 3/5 the speed MAAAY just push this to a believable level... for Spiderman that is!!
Web strength calculations aside, it would seem like that much force where the webs on either side contact the steel frame would be enough to turn it into cheese-wire. Spidey ending up almost stationary while the train ploughs onward, slicing it and everyone roughly in half.. I think the happier ending was probably the better choice though :)
You could have checked the toughness of one web strand with the green goblin bridge scene as he is capable of holding himself, MJ, and a cable car full of people in the air without fail. That will give you the MJ/M3 of his webs.
Great episodes like always, Kyles. In fact, I love all your spiderman episodes, they really get me into the Spider-verse. All those puns though, they made me catch flies.
Great show Kyle! Another angel you didn’t mentioned in the show but perhaps thought about is that stress of the brick walls that the spiderwebs are attached to, that could play a factor if the area of wall has been released from its place because of the amount of energy it allowed to be able to withstand the specific area force of the webbing. Even if the webbing could withstand 2000MJ/m^3, I would assume that the bricks would dislodge before hitting that point. I’d do the math, but for some reason I mix up which formulas to use at what times, yet I’m passing my physic class, amazingly.
You assumed that there are 1000 people in 6 coaches. If I understood you correctly, that would give approx 166 people in 1 coach. I don't think these many people were there in a coach
Loved the episode, I looked up graphene toughness to compare it to spider silk and see if it could work, and found an interesting article about an experiment where researchers introduced graphene and carbon nanotubes into the spiders environment. They ingested it, and their new silk was up to 10x the toughness! So Peter just needs to eat some graphene and he should be fine article: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170915165253.htm
That is cool, but humans should not eat graphene and especially not carbon nanotubes, but he could incorporate those into his web slingers, and then hope the train doesn't tear him in half though ^^
You forgot a few things for your calculations Kyle... Spiderman initially tried to slow the train by using his legs as the brakes and then attempted a single web line. While he gave up on using his legs, and the first web line broke, both attempts would have impacted the train's acceleration. Perhaps not by a lot, but both instances could have dropped your calculations a bit closer to 1. Another thing to consider is that at the end of the scene the train is no longer accelerating despite the fact that Peter is no longer holding his webs. This would mean that while the train's speed was bumped up to 80 MPH, something went wrong and the engine itself had to have stopped providing power. Thus the train's speed would have been reducing due to friction as well. Factored with the assumption that his webs are a bit stronger than those of the Darwin's Bark Spider, and that his lines were slightly larger than estimated (Even if only slightly)? How close to 1 this would bring the equation I'm not certain, but I'd be curious to see someone take this into account.
A pretty big oversight made was that Spider-Man isn't bringing the subway to a sudden stop but to a gradual stop. The idea being to use his web lines as a brake to slow the train down possiblely letting the first set of lines snap and allowing the second set to take over the load barring. All of this would allow the momentum of the train to be lost in stages and also to reduce the Olympian amount of strain on his body. Love the show and hope I can get on footnotes one day.
I know this is super late, but I completely agree, I also don't think he accounted for Spiderman himself, we know he has super strength, and was using his feet to slow the train down as well.
Also at the end of the rail there was a stopper that the train rammed through. It probably helped too.
Actually I completely forgot about that
Nice work champ!
You gotta give those people on the train credit for keeping Spiderman's identity a secret.
I doubt anyone would have know who he was anyway. After all he's 'Just some kid'.
@@olivertunnah3987 yeah i see your point, but what if, say they saw Peter on the street and thought "Hey that's the guy who saved us, maybe I should keep his identity a secret."
@@runningthemeta5570 *thinks*
@@runningthemeta5570 That's almost statistically impossible, seeing how populous NYC is.
Well back then taking out your phone and start video taping was not that popular...if the train scene happens today you know some people are gonna do it lol
You assume that the train actually reaches 80mph, but a quick google search reveals that most New York trains only have a top speed of 55mph.
Due to safety regulations, there isn't just a lever that allows you to push the train to 80mph.
I ran the numbers and it brings the energy down to 83,520,000 J, Just about 1/4th the amount you calculated. Which should make it significantly easier to stop a train using 'normal' spider silk.
YEAH,MATH
You also need to calculate in that he nearly broke his leg, breaking wooden crossbeams for a couple of blocks. He also broke two buildings before using the multiple strands at once. so we know that a single strand can pull the side of a brick building off before breaking.
Kyle also assumed that every car was full. While that's probably true for a few of the cars, we actually see inside a few times and they're not actually to full capacity. If you decreased the numbers by 10% and went a little lower in the weight scale (there were children on the train), that would also bring down the energy.
All true, but he also crunched numbers on the assumption that the train was coasting, which was not the case. The energy goes back up quite a bit with the continual forward momentum the engine is producing.
He did get it down to 4 strands, so if it's typically ¼ like you say then it would be plausible, and that's not even considering that the car is likely not full.
I rewatched the train scene and noticed a few things that could have helped Spidey out 1) He tries slowing it down with his feet first, breaking a ton of the wooden beams on the track 2) He tries using only a couple webs first before he does the many webs thing and this tears out the sides of a few buildings 3) The train totally destroys the iron safety stopper at the end of the track
All of these together (along with Spidey pulling) might have helped slow the train down JUST enough
perhaps......
we gotta do the math
And plot armor ☝️🤓
The "web ropes" may be pencil wide but they are composed of smaller web fibers so this should greatly increase their strength. Kind of like how ropes and strings that humans make work.
Kyle, you said he stops the train just using spider silk, but don't forget that he may have decelerated the train with his own feet against several beams of wood prior to using the silk. Plus the train smashes through a barrier at the end of the track.
Came to mention this
I was thinking this the whole time as well.
Yeah, let's just ignore what would happen to any realistic physical model of a human in all of this. I'm curious to know whether the forces on his arms would be sufficient to tear them off, even augmenting the values a bit for super humans, in the context of real world physics.
But also some webs didn't reach their full size (less expansion, less kinectic energy absorbed) and others ripped off some parts of the city, reducing the effects of those webs on the deceleration of the train.
And didn’t he try twice to stop the train? I distinctly remember him having try, reattach more silk. That would have slowed the train and changed the formula, right?? GET AT ME KYLE, I want to know!
Stan Lee activated the emergency brake off screen. He is always there keeping tabs on his creations and is to humble to take credit.
Philip Collier after all he is god in marvel universe
Kinda like god
God is dead. Stan Lee is dead. Stan Lee is god.
This comment
It's hard to see in the movie clip, but in the comic Spider Man's silk is actually many strands braided together into a silk rope. Braiding the rope instead of attaching many separate strands across two points will distribute the load much better. Using multiple attachments will likely mean that some strands have a shorter effective length than others and those strands will be under more stress. That method essentially builds in weak points. Braiding negates this problem almost entirely. (I do concede that there are stress points introduced because of the braid, but those are nearly negligible in comparison to the stresses in a multiple-strand arrangement).
As the rope nears it's breaking point, weaker fibers with flaws will begin to fail. Say one fiber in a rope breaks under tension, so it isn't supporting the load anymore. At a sufficient distance from the break along that fiber, the friction with neighboring fibers is sufficient to exert the same tension on it as all the other fibers. So even though that flaw has caused damage at its point along the rope, the rest of the rope is unaffected. It's a remedy to the weakest-link of a chain problem.
I don't have numbers for the value for the braiding advantage, but if it approaches 4, Spider Man could stop the train.
The numbers he used assumed perfect load distribution for all lines. (IE ignored more complicated bits of physics because they're not usually needed unless the back of the envelope calculation shows it's feasible)
It's been a while, but don't they mention near the beginning of the first film that the spiders in the lab were engineered to have stronger webs?
Basically a string very thick and a composed string just as thick shouldn’t change much
I am amazed by how these videos are made. We gotta have a behind the scenes episode!
Okay, quick follow-up, though: If he did stop the train with the "supernaturally tough mutant silk", would the train's structure hold up with the pressure of Spider Man's body mashing up against it? Like, at the rate of deceleration we see, would the train's front be able to withstand the force as dispersed across the area of contact with Spider Man's body, or would he punch through, resulting in the only resistance being applied to the threads themselves, and basically not so much stopping the train as turning it into a runaway convertible?
Also, if we're stopping a train with silk anchored to buildings, would the brick to which the webs are attached be strong enough as anchors? Or would it just rip a chunk out and whap around through traffic like that one scene of Spiderverse?
Oh god I'm imagining some sort of spider man / "invincible" crossover, those poor poor passengers
In the scene, it most certainly ripped a chunk or two off a building. And some of the web lines actually broke.
In the 1960's bricks and mortar might have held more than today. That was, as my electrician brother in law said, "when concrete was real concrete." And a building's strength applies against the weather and other stresses that are common to it.
I think that if he aimed lower toward the bottoms of buildings, the foundation and foot of each building could help stabilize the webs more securely, too, like holding a handful of spaghetti. One hand is the foundation and the long ends of sticks are the towers. Hold the spaghetti at the far end and the spaghetti snaps immediately. Hold the spaghetti near the foundation (the other hand) and it takes much more force to break the spaghetti.
In fact, don't those who prefer shortened spaghetti break it with hands together to prevent strands from flying across the kitchen? It stabilizes the bunch of spaghetti.
I think the main problems with it aren't the web assumptions, it's the speed and weight assumptions.
Even though the train is supposed to be going 80 mph, the max speed possible without derailing for a NYC subway car is 24.6 m/s(55mph) in modern day cars (Source:MTA), that have been in use since 2006, which is around the same time. (SM2 is 2004, but for the sake of argument lets give a little upper hand)
Also, because of the amount of light on the buildings in the scenes during the fight and during the train stop, and accounting the time of the year, I would place this incident happening in mid May, so the amount of sunlight suggests that its close to 7:30pm.
According to the MTA statistics, the amount of people going southbound in Manhattan at the time in that time of the year is about 35%, (330 people in 6 subway cars) and if it was Westbound towards the Hudson, that number is only 13%, (105 people in 6 subway cars)
That would affect the additional weight, making it easier to stop the train with normal condition spider web.
Please let me know what the math comes up to then, thanks for reading.
PS. Kyle, you rock ✊✊
You have my vote for SuperNerd on the correction side of footnotes.
Though I disagree on the 55 mph statement. The top safe service speed is 55 mph. But Doc Oc didn’t put it at max safe service speed. He put it at max speed without care of safety.
Which google tells me is 80 mph. (I’m not a train expert)
@@NinjaBearFilms Would the train itself not have something internally limiting the wheels from putting down power above 55 mph?
Also the calculation didn't consider the energy loss through friction with the rail (in this situation, it would be probably a lot higher than usual) and wether or not the motor of the vehicule is running and producing work.
And like superman catching a plane, the front of the cars aren't designed to support a force capable of stopping the train so Spidey would probably go through the cars cutting it in two.
@@NinjaBearFilms I believe 55 mph is the maximum it can go without derailing, and seeing how the train didn't derail itself in the movie, we can, therefore, assume that it was moving within that speed limit.
Statistically, the train might only be that full on average, but when we get a scene set inside a train car, it looks fairly full.
Even if the web is strong enough, and Spiderman's arms don't get pulled apart, wouldn't the brick/concrete material that the webs connect to be ripped out from the surrounding walls? (ie wouldn't they be ripping out chunks of the wall with the train pulling on them?)
You mean like this
ua-cam.com/video/yRhRZB-nqOU/v-deo.html
@@brefasdra Exactly what I was thinking, even multiplying the amount of web used by 8x (and thus reducing individual force on each connection by the same) compared to this part I highly doubt it would be enough to avoid ripping bricks and windows out of buildings.
man I was hoping i said it first
Beat me to it. Same though. Contact points are tiny and it would just rip chunks off the walls imo.
Well let's think about this: We obviously know that Spider-Man was given super human strength, but he also has to maintain how powerful his punches are or his grip on his webs when it comes to fighting crime, web swinging, or grabbing an object to throw at an enemy. Now you can say that the bricks can break off, but he would have to maintain his strength of keeping the webs together before having the bricks on verge of breaking. I might be wrong about this statement, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
New Because Science, day officially improved!
You know why my day improved? Because Science
How far could Legendary Pictures monsters see? Godzilla, King Kong, King Ghidorah, etc.
I know you did it for LOTR
Another top quality Because Science 👌
Thanks Kyle, for working so hard on making these videos, as well as footnotes, livestreams and the Mortal Kombat videos! They're all really fun and interesting to watch and really helpful for learning more about science. It must be difficult to be so energetic and spend so much time on your work and I really appreciate it. Also, thanks to Nate, Pan, the MK Minions and all the other behind the scenes crew that make Because Science possible as well!
So gravity doesn’t work on Kyle’s hair if he’s upside down but wearing a spider man mask? What’s the science behind that? Enquiring minds want to know
That's the power of Aqua Net MAXIMUM Hold 😂
The mask was holding it up? -- kH
Even the hair that’s not under the mask?? Because Magic!
Also Kyle I love these videos. Thank you for this channel!
It's just the physics of the void. There is no "up" or "down". There is only the void.
Spider-Man would simply be ripped in half. Just having super strength doesn’t mean you could withstand the force of an entire train.
Also, in this incarnation of spider man, doesn’t the continual use of multiple long strands of spider silk drain Spider-Man of vital mass and nutrients instantly, being that his body produces the silk as opposed to mechanical silk shooters? There’s no way his body could produce that much silk without losing a ton of mass over a fairly short period of time. Dude would need to be snacking constantly!
Speaking of...in the void, what kind of snacks are there? Anything good? I’m a snacky guy so I know the importance of variety.
He might be much heavier than an average human to be able to keep producing silk webbing non stop
or even if he'd not be ripped in half, he'd rip train's metal and go through it and all squishy passengers.
Tell Superman or the hulk that...
Spider-Man also has extreme durability (compared to you're average human) so ripping in half should not be a problem.
i'm pretty sure spiderman has taken a beating or 2 from the likes of rhino, the thing and hulk and has survived being rammed though buildings so his durability shouldn't be at question
As Uncle Ben says: "With great work done over time taken, comes great responsibility!"
Eoghan QUADRA
Ha ha ha!
I see what you did there…
Eoghan QUADRA you. Are. Awesome. Lol
Formula 👏😏
Couple of things to note.
1. Spidermans webs aren't stopping the train instantly.
2. spiderman tried like twice to stop it before hand.
Something very important about the SECOND time. He fires off 1 Web hand each. But holds onto 7/10 webs PER hand(it doesn't focus in for me to see clearly). That maths out around.... yep. 14/20 web lines in 2 casts.
3. it slams into a stopper at the end.
4. spiderman is still holding on as the train is going off the rails forward over the hole, and as such is exerting tension forces redirecting some of the energy at the end downward, which should increase friction.
5. Spidermans webs are very small strands, woven around a main line in hand. This increases surface area without increasing area.
6. Strands actively break multiple times throughout, diverting large amounts of energy.
7. Spidermans first usage of webs was 1 cast per hand, but he was holding onto like 6 or 7 lines of web in each hand after the first usage.
He then uses 10 webs per side, each side being 7/10 each, means he uses over 100 or 70 lines of web. Again inferencing the SECOND scene, again for the number of total webs PER shot, 10 shots per hand. The buildings and metal he attaches them to also bend and break and shatter and the webs bend and break.
Wow thats tons of information.
So theoretically.
If we take option 2. The fact that EACH fling of web, generates 7 to 10 lines of web per fling, AND he objectively launches 8 to 10 flings PER hand. He gets 112 to 200 Lines of web... yeah.
Tobby stopped the train JUST fine. But he may have crushed all those poor webs into some super strong putty somehow.
I did infact just go back and look at the video. I did count the webs in his hand on scene 2 as he fell forward and caught himself. I did use that to then calculate as the train is pulling forward how many lines he would have, and I did get the absurdly large number of webs you see in the math. He REALLY did have a ridiculous amount of web.
His legs! The missing factor! He was also applying frictional force through his legs onto the track.
If you calculate the width as 2^.75 (1.682) times your assumption and the toughness as 2^.5 (1.414) times the toughest known spider silk, then it works out to exactly 1.
Yes, this still puts the amount of silk he has to hold on to as a bit high, and yes it is still quite a bit stronger than any real-world silk, but it finds a balance between insane strength and insane volume, making it more plausible than simply amping up either one of those variables. Besides, we're talking about Spider-man here - I think he can handle it.
Hey Kyle, wouldn’t the buildings toughness fail with that amount of force being pulled on said building? Love the show.
Yes, spider silk is much stronger than steel, brick or concrete, or anything really
@@sabiangriffin3713 Wrong comment?
@@HexenkoeniginVonAngmar ???
@@sabiangriffin3713 Your comment doesn't really fit the original comment. Thst one was about he toughness of the buildings, not of the spider silk.
@@HexenkoeniginVonAngmar What I was saying was that the spider silk is stronger than the materials the building is made of so therefore would break before the spidersilk
Can Spider-Man stop a train ?
- Yes we saw it in the movie 😂
Yeah, if we think about it, Spider-Man was bitten by a new kind of spider, it wasn't nor, every ability that a spider has Spider-Man gets and the abilities are stronger than ever
Yep we did👊😂
But also his webs are mutated, who knows.
Can Spider-Man stop a train?
- If you show him where the breaks are he sure can.
For a slightly more in-depth answer, see the video above -- kH
Kyle, I've been watching Because Science ever since your earliest marvel theories (such as moving Mjolnir in space, thor flying, etc.) and I gotta say that this has made me love science fiction and science in general.
Recently though I've been playing a popular game I think you'd like called Subnautica, a very science-based game in the near distant future where your character is stranded on a mostly-oceanic planet as one of the only survivors of a space ship crash, and in the game one of your earliest tools of survival is called The Fabricator, which is a machine that can take surrounding elements and items (from your inventory) and make something else out of them, be it complicated, finished machines or other materials.
My question is this: would this machine be safe enough to use in a close range (like inside an escape pod), and how close are we to making a machine like this right now? Or is it just simply fiction entirely?
Keep up the great work!
If you been living 30000 years ago computer would be impossible... So I wouldn't rule it out. I guess it be a 3d printer thing of some sorts, that fits in your hand or it have to be like a nano bot thing. very trick in deeded assuming on what you were thinking of fabricating. And it being made in a confined space could have simple and obvious limitations
You missed several hidden variables.
1. The web lines are not placed simultaneously. The entire process works like one giant rubberband. Energy loss calculation requires integral equations.
2. The train, actually impacts a device designed to stop it at the end of the line. Without it, the train would have never stopped.
3. There is some energy transfer into the train's hull, as Spidey's body crushes it.
The thing I always wondered about the train fight was the toss where Doc Octavius throws spider-man up, and then Spider-Man comes back down to hit Doc Oc from behind.
Often labeled as impossible event for him to be hit from behind. But I always figured the loss of speed going up and the increase speed coming down could maybe make it possible.
My initial thought was to use the time he was in the air, and how high he was tossed, but I couldn’t get a clear height reference and the camera work seems like they use slow-motion for parts of it, so airtime is difficult to estimate.
So instead I pulled up parabolic motion formulas to determine a reasonable throw that could result in what we see.
If Doc Oc throws Spider-Man at 59.3 mph launching him at a 19° angle. Spider-Man would achieve a max height of 12.8 feet (seems reasonable from the scene) would be in the air for 1.76 seconds and travel 144.7 feet.
The average service speed of the train used in the film is 55 mph or about 80 2/3 feet per second. So in 1.76 seconds he would travel 142 feet.
So at that speed and angle Spider man would travel up, come back down behind Doc Oc and have enough distance/momentum to knock him down and back. Which closely matches what we see in the film.
But I can’t figure out the relative speed issue. Since they both start at 55 mph, would Doc Oc only need to add 4.3 mph to Spider-Man’s speed to achieve this result? Or is there another formula that I’m missing to account for them having the same starting speed before the toss?
Thank you for inspiring us to look at our favorite things in new nerdy ways.
NinjaBearFilms Cracked talked about this a few years ago; he’s moving laterally with the train and being thrown forward toward the bridge, so it’s completely impossible to end up behind Ock unless he’s teleporting or violating physics 😄
Yuusa big ol nerd.
@@michael_bullard maybe the train was accelerating?
Harsh Ch it’s possible but since the fight hadn’t progressed to the driver’s compartment yet I’d imagine the train would be at normal speed with no or negative acceleration 🙂
You clearly wasted your time on this. It's obvious that if you throw anything, and that too obliquely, from an object in motion such as a train(with almost any non zero velocity), it can never land on the same spot you threw it from, much less behind. Even Spiderman doesn't defy the laws of classical physics. Unless he quantum tunneled or something..
2 Things:
1.: Even if spider silk would be tough enough to withstand the forces, the train, the houses the silk sticks on or Peter Parkers Body would break/get ripped apart.
2.: If the train isn't accelerating anymore it would also get slower because of the rails scratching on it, and i believe that also some breaks are used to stop the train, so the silk wouldn't have to be as tough.
Sorry if I did language mistakes (english is not my native language).
Ps: Love the show
For your second point, I use a train to commute and learned that metal on metal friction is very low. It takes energy for a train to speed up/slow down but far less to keep going at its current speed. It's why trains can be so efficient and haul a line of box cars a mile long on surprisingly little fuel. Unless someone turned on the brakes, it takes a train a ver long time to coast to a stop.
@@Alverant I see your point and I agree, but I believe that someone would use the (emergency-) brakes in such a situation, so I think you should also consider this
He says can spider-man but he means the silk, not can the brick wall survive in the seen of spider....
His body wont break apart because he is not a damn normal human anymore, he is a super human. He has lifted things WAY more heavy than that.
@@Alverant in the movie you can literally see sparks coming out and hear loud noises because of the friction. Doc Ock broke something to make the train go faster than intended, possibly breaking some other parts of the train because of this, and increasing the friction.
Didn't Doc Ock put the train into full throttle and break the controls before jumping off? In that case, Spidey has a lot more than just the train's momentum to deal with, he also has the power from the electric drive motors trying to keep the train moving. If that's the case, then I think a much better thing for smart-boy Peter Parker to do is A) figure out how to disable the motors (i.e. by ripping out wires) and B) apply the brakes (most modern trains have braking systems with redundancies and failsafes; even if the driver is disabled and controls are destroyed, there should be a way to get the brakes to activate).
In any case, I also wonder if the front of the train is strong enough for Spidey to stop it like he did in the movie. We see metal bending a little and windows breaking, but with that much force applied to such a small area I think it's more realistic for the webbing to slice the train in half on a horizontal plane like a cheese wire.
Anyway, Kyle, I love the show and am hoping to get into BS Footnotes some day!
Very good point about the front of the train.
Kyle did say right at the end that the calculations were based on the purposeful assumption that the train was merely coasting, and not under (ahem) locomotive power.
from what I understand the train is electric and the motor gets it power from a 3rd rail. so once the track is destroyed or the train is derailed the motor will stop.
@@psionx1 That's correct. But by the time the train has gone off the end of the rails and the motors are unpowered, it's too late. If I were Spider Man, the first thing I'd do as soon as Doc Ock leaves is to rip up some floor panels (super strength, remember) and pull the wires that connect to the motors.
I'm not sure what kind of braking systems that particular train has, but I'm pretty familiar with the Westinghouse air brake design. Bascially, a line connecting all cars on the train is normally kept pressurized, and a reduction in pressure causes application of the brakes. So, all he'd need to do to apply brakes is punch a hole in the pipe somewhere.
it's not too late. as it is possible to derail the train in a way that will cause it too slide along the track. it will be a bumpy ride but it should stop more or less safely as long as the track dosn't have any curves for about a mile or 2. also the chance exists that the breaks snap or get worn down to nothing by the combination of the trains forward momentum and the motor still running full blast. the safest thing you can do is try to hot-wire the control panel.
Damn it kinda creeped me out when he said "Thank you for watching, Christopher".. I know its not me, but still wasnt expecting it
you and me both
You, you and me three.
I've been waiting for this day for years!
That's my name and I had time scroll through the comments to make sure I wasn't crazy haha
I guess the Christopher club starts here.
Thank you Kyle for your humour and these videos, was feeling super down today after a rough breakup and watching your videos always make me laugh and feel better. You’re amazing keep doing what you’re doing!
The problem I imagine this scenario would have in real life is that while the webs are spread throught multiple buildings they all converge on Spider-Man's hands, so all the force is exherted on a relatively small area, just the webs, his arms, shoulders and upper back. Even if we assume his superpowers enable him to withstand it without being torn appart, the train cart is certainly not made out of supermaterials, and it would probably end up splitting it in half from the stress put onto it by Parker
Another fun factor to consider is the weave structure of Spidey's web ropes. He might not only have stronger silk than any spider in nature, but also, in scaling a spider web up to human size, the silk strands might weave together in ways never before seen that further increase its effective toughness.
THIS this is what i was thinking through most of the video, any time we get a close up we see the shape of the webbing isnt like a single strand and weaving it together massively increases its toughness, even where he points out the multiple points of contact you can see those are multistrand too
The formula considers the volume of the object, that's why Kyle specifies that it would have to be too thick to work
@@tetsuyakenshi It considers the volume, yes, but not the structure, that's my point. I realize the formula is an approximation that basically assumes the web is a single uniform consistency, but it doesn't take into account the ways in which the multiple strands are woven together, which can considerably change how it behaves. That's why I used the phrase 'effective toughness.'
@@krumphau :O sorry, right right, I get what you say, it's a very interesting idea
@@tetsuyakenshi Yeah, no worries! It's definitely a complicated follow up to play around with, more than the regular video could really get into :)
Sam Raimi's Spider-Man doesn't have synthetic webbing though. It's never explained but Peter is not mixing a potion like Tom Holland. The webbing comes naturally. Couldn't you calculate the tensile strength of webbing for an actual spider and just change the mass of the "spider", in this case, to match the mass of Peter Parker?
If a tiny spider has super strong webbing, then it can be assumed that with a mass the size of Spider-Man, the webbing should most definitely be strong enough.
Love the show Kyle. I'm so jealous of those lovely locks.
he did, thats why he assumed the width to be that of a pencil
Million Joules = MJ
Spider-Man's girlfriend initials are involved in physics.
Megajoules*
And so are Michael Jackson's
Not my MJ. ;-)
So is weed's.
GS?
with this much force being applied to Spiderman's body he might just go straight through the train
Hey kyle, thank's for all the science and laughs you've given me over the years, I watched these videos so much that when I started my first physics class I knew almost all of the equations just from watching you over the years
Or Mr Wizard the 3rd as I refer to him. (Bill Nye being Mr Wizard Jr.)
Best praise I can get, thank you! Good luck with the rest of your studies -- kH
Hello Kyle. Good job but a few corrections - 1. Spiderman first used his legs to slow the train down. Then uses two webs to slow it down even further. (Assuming the train doesnt accelerate back to 80mph cz the train does not accelerate at the end after it comes to a stop.)
2. Right before it comes to a stop, it hits a barricade and then the front wheels go off the rails causing the under part of the train to slide on the rails causing frictional resistance.
This means the initial and final velocities that you used are not accurate and since KE changes with square of velocity, i think it would make a considerable difference. And yea, Spiderman's web is much stronger than any ordinary spider silk because it genetically modified, radioactive and a hybrid with human DNA.
Love the show though!
wouldn't another factor be the time it took to stop i could be missing something but this equation seem to just be shier force to stop it not gradual deceleration which would make it dramatically easier to stop as time went on
@@CrimsonReaper189 that is another way of solving. Here he uses energy conservation so time doesn't matter.
If they tensile strength of spider silk exceeds that of steel, wouldn't have Spider-man just ended up bifurcating the entire train horizontally? Thus killing all the passengers in the same manner as the rope, snap-back scene from the movie Ghost Ship.
Great show Kyle; see you on footnotes.
Check any Navy or Coast Guard mooring line safety video on the dangers of line separation. Limbs and lives have been lost.
@@whirledpeaz5758 I was in the Navy. I got to watch many safety videos and that includes Line Separation (Snap-Back). If I remember correctly, Mythbusters even did an episode about it.
@@fozball1980 I guessed the objective was to stop the train by using multiple tensile lines to absorb the force. Almost like a pillow would do. So it isn't like using opposing force like Superman would. What I did think just now is that the heat produced by this actions shoud be absolutlely unbeareable for the materials around the train. Sorry, english as a second language.
@@andresgoldenberg4568 Your English is better than most Americans'.
Luther Smithers thnx!
The one factor I feel like a lot of people overlook in that scene is the strength of the buildings Spider-man is attaching the webs to... I'm not the best at math but I'm pretty sure that his webbing would have been ripping chunks out of the brickwork...
Peter would have to use twice the amount of webs that we saw him use in the movie. The same thing goes with that boat scene.
I noticed it looked like you used Peter's first attempt to slow the train, where he used an easily countable number of webs to try to slow down the train. However, even in the movie, that attempt failed. He then proceeded to shoot out a much larger number of ropes to finish the job of stopping the train, which would actually require less energy than before, due to it being slowed by his first attempt.
Yes, but you have to remember that in the first movie, the spiders were genetically enhanced. It's not a far-fetched idea to think that with great genetics comes great webbing. The genetic mutations of the spiders could have led to silk stronger than that found in nature.
Besides, what you left out was the fact that several of his webs broke prior to the train actually stopping, meaning the remaining webbing took on greater strain.
I was just about to post this comment. I really hope you get a super nerd for it.
💥Super Nerd💥
@@blazedgamingkr1438 aww
its worth mentioning that the final 8 hes left with isnt the total he used several snapped along the way also which would help reduce the speed, i mean it wasnt 40 but it was still more lol
Eggs-zactly !!! I mean the man is not using normal silk to Webb his way around , this is webbing powerful enough to hold back supowered individuals, cars, and humongous projectiles so It would be safe to assume that it is strong enough to withstand a train.
It's not far fetched at all, since that's actually the case. The spiders were modified to give them superior web making, among other abilities.
I saw the movie. Spoiler:
He can.
Props to you Kyle for dealing with all these armchair scientists and physicists trying to second guess your work. I'm just impressed you did the background research to try and make an estimate. Thanks for entertaining us - you da man.
Yes, we can presume that Spidey's web is indeed tougher than anything than humanly tested. Even in the comic books, there has been numerous examples shown that, even though Spidey's web holds under enormous stress, that's not saying that the materials to which his webs are anchored break long before his webbing does. By Marvel canon (before Disney started mucking up everything), Spider-Man's webbing has been described as "tougher than piano wire." That may still be "selling it short," but that's still impressive.
A different strategy that would have helped is if Spidey had laid down thick pads of webbing along the train *tracks* so that the stickiness would get drawn up in the wheels/axles & take up more of the stress than his web lines alone could have handled. But we didn't see him doing that in the movie, did we? In the (pre-Disney) Marvel canon, Spidey has brought speeding cars to a stop by just webbing the wheels to the pavement. He would spray down about 1" thick pad on the ground, just in front of each wheel. If Spidey had set a few webbing-pads in a *serial line along each track,* then this would have been more plausible.
Friction and air resistance were not accounted for. Love de show Kyle.
Not sure if they are big factors here -- kH
I was thinking the same thing. I mean, not so much the air resistance but friction should play a much greater part. How would we calculate the work done by the e-brake to add that to Parker's precarious performance?
@@becausescience, sure, I've done the calculations. for steel μ=0,16 then if the web lines are 15m and they stretched up to 30m, the work done by de friction W=F*D=290000kg*0,16*30m=1,39 MJ negligible for the matter. The rolling friction coefficient is even lower 0,001-0,0002 so the result is null
When my brother was little and we used to watch these movies nonstop, he once turned to me and asked "so if a spider bites me can I become Spiderman?"
Fast forward over a decade, I'm sitting in the theater with my cousins watching Captain Marvel and my cousin's 10 year old asks "so if I'm in an explosion can I get super powers?" Lol. Anyone else had to deal with kids asking this?
Yes... The kids... Definitely just the kids...
@@JacobDGoldman lol! It's true! When the movie was over I struggled so much not to immediately tell my brother u till after he saw it. I'm just curious if this is a regular occurrence or if it's just my awesomely weird family.
Please, for the sake of the kids, *just say no!* 🙏
@@KickyFut oh with both of them, as soon as they finished the question I shouted NO! lol
Yeah just have to tell them that those are fictional characters and anything worthwhile is not given but earned.
Great episode as always, I often think about that scene and have come to the conclusion that, beyond the strength of his silk, which, let's be honest, is great because he has radioactive blood, like many before have stated, it's more a problem of their stickiness vs the sheer toughness of the objects he attached to ie. The bricks, we even see earlier on in that scene, he shoots some webs out, and they rip the wall away, which leads to him putting out even more webs, which a, shows his quick thinking and ability to adapt, and b, shows that his webs are able to stick to and keep sticking to objects and withstanding the breaking point if bricks and concrete. P.S.(spoilers I guess for the new Spider-man Game) there is actually a very cool scene in it where you have to stop another rub away train, and we see Spider-man try to stop it with webs, it doesn't work and he comments how it worked last time, and then proceeds to attach the webs to the rails and then BENDS THEM UP THREW THE CEILING AND OUT ONTO THE STREET!!!! So uhhhh.....how?
I like the additional breakdown of assumptions and variables that you did in this one. There have been many cases where I don't totally agree with your assumptions but I don't know how much that one assumption or variable actually effects the ends result. Giving this broader answer and showing how much a variables or assumptions would need to change to give a certain result really puts everything else into perspective. I'd love to see you do it more.
More realistically he could hold into webs until they break and then shoot more. Then he doesn’t need insanely thick or tough webbing and doesn’t need to hold onto a bunch of webs at once.
Kyle, I love you and your show. It's so inspiring how readily you learn from the criticisms you've received in the past and are constantly using them to making the show better and better. This is easily my favorite science show on UA-cam and I hope your viewership can continue to grow,; so that more and more people can be exposed to this dank nerdery.
Spiderman's webbing was always portrayed as looking like a whole spiderweb in tube form, with cross stands wrapping around the long threads. Since these wraparound threads would connect to the strands, would that transfer some force to them from the strands and couldn't the wraparound thread provide some strength as well?
Reminds me of the 1970's commercial about Goodyear's steel belted radial tires called 721 because they steel belts were seven strands around two strands wrapped by one strand. Now would they waste the extra steel to do that wrapping of each set of steel bands for every tire for millions of tires if wrapping didn't provide some virtue? Could it provide some extra strength or toughness to the web?
Interesting point
You factored all of the spider webbing strength and elasticity, but you should have also factored Peter's spider strength, that should factor on whether or not he would be able to stop the train.
I love that in the game he tries that shit and even says something along the lines of "Guess that only worked once"
Someone better give praise to the structural engineer for making buildings strong enough to withstand all that pulling.
*_Well, if Thomas The Steam Dank Engine fights Spider-Man in Far From Home, that would be epic._*
Maybe we can assume that cars are not at near full capacity?
This one is easy. It doesn't matter how strong Spider-Man's webbing is, or how securely it bonds to the anchoring structures. What matters is how much force it takes to tear the webbing out/off his spinnerets/web-spinners, and/or pull the web strands from his grip, and/or tear his arms out of their shoulder sockets.
Also it would matter if the train was accelerating or coasting as well.
And how strong the surface materials in the buildings are as well. Even the sturdiest brick and mortar would have a high compressive strength, but low tensile strength. Just like what happened the first time he tried it in the movie, all those other buildings would have had chunks ripped out.
Canonically speaking Peter Parker has a strength to be able to lift up until 25 Tons.
i was just so fixated on kyle's hair cause it's literally GLOWING
the spider silk is not absorbing all of the kinetic energy, its also being transferred into spidermans upper body and the contacts points he's making on the train, hence the bending steel in the film and the ripping suit. Also you should probably calculate how sticky the silk is, I would assume it lets go of the walls before it breaks.
I have a feeling it's been brought up already, but assuming 1) the webbing is strong enough to stop the train, and 2) the forces involved DON'T rip him in half because super powers...
The train still isn't going to stop because the web is just going to rip to walls down, or at least just rip large chunks out of them causing massive property damage and probably killing a bunch of people on the streets below. Good times!
New idea: Clone a bunch of spidermen and just have them punch the train a bunch of times
That's also assuming that the adhesion of the webs can endure the forces before just snapping off.
Comic Book New York - rebuilt stronger than before by Damage Control after the first superhero battle :P
@@King63Kobra But that might cook it!
He says can spider-man but he means the silk, not can the brick wall survive in the seen of spider....
Would the length of the spider lines matter, after they stretched? A NY train car is between 50 and 75 feet in length, depending on the model. It looks lie there are about 2-3 cars at the beginning of the clip.
Peter in spider-man ps4- "totally worked last time"
I just love all the scientific speculation surrounding spiderman. There’s just so much to learn and so much creativity possible.
Great video, I love how you break everything down, very thorough
Sure the webbing could hold, but would his shoulders? Just imaging the horrifying popping sound as they come out of their sockets fro the strain
I've always thought the same thing
Did your proofreading ability just dislocate? ;)
super strength
Hey Kyle yet another spectacular video. I love to watch these while doing my biology homework to get the ol "subway" wheels rolling. I have been watching these for a few years now and it is always educating to learn about physics and mathematics when they are applied to something alot of pop culture fans such as I "gw-enjoy". Your show ignited my interests in sciences while I start my second year of high school and I assure you I will have many science related classes in the future. Keep up the amazing content.
(!!ATTENTION!!) Two spiderman nods are located in this comment.
So, there's a Futurama episode where Fry says something to Leela about how global warming must've never happened. She responds that it did but nuclear winter cancelled it out. So, could it and how practical would nuclear winter be as a solution?
During the 90s and early 2000s there was a lot of dooms day suthsayers out there. Me and my friends often joked about them happening at once and canceling each other out.
I think Kyle mentioned something about nuclear winter in one of the old videos from the old channel. He also did a video about the global warming plus ice cube thing from a Futurama episode, but that wasn't the one I was talking about
It would be a stop gap at best. Since none of the Gases are taken out of the atmosphere. You make an Ice sphere surrounded by warming Gases. The Gases would eventually win out, and the planet would start to warm once again. Now if this mini ice age took out a significant portion of Humans, and Fossil Fuel production. Then over the long run of a thousand year with no more CO2 input from Humans. The planet would slowly recover, however if Humans did not learn from this, and continued to use Fossil Fuels they'd be right back to where they were before the bombs fell. To say nothing of the Radiation SALTED Land, Sea, and Air decimating any chance of humans wanting to live there for at least a few decades to a century or more.
And they drop a big block of ice in the ocean to keep it that way
I was hoping you would talk about the forces placed on his body and how he merely just passed out instead of dying.
Did you take in for account of the drag and friction on the train?
All I could think about is Elastic Tow Straps... and how they FAIL because people secure them to bumper bars (which are bolted onto a frame) or the toe bars (which are also bolted and are greased) rather than the steel frame of the vehicle.
Excluding the abilities of Spiderman and the weblines... the point of failure is the surface contact with the buildings.
I don't even think most NYC buildings surfaces could support human weight, let alone his swinging motion.
Bricks are structured to support the weight above it in an interlaced pattern, it is not a solid structural masse but a pressed/molded form of earthen clay held in place by a dried cement slurry that acts like glue. To be pulled on from that angle by a massive force is not possible without every web ripping out the brickwork. Even if it was a solid block of concrete it would stress fracture and rip off the surface layer of the cement/brick/masonry... thats also assuming its not a painted/coated surface and the web would just sheer the coating off the moment it pulls.
I agree with most of your statement, but what if the bricks in question had a network of some kind of secondary support structure, such as rubar beams? Would that not help add strength?
@@donaldlang1871 Add strength yes, but at the forces being applied the brick would be pulled against the rebar in a way it wasn't engineered for, the brick being mostly earthen clay/concrete would reach a breaking. I think to support the forces being applied the web really has to be anchored to an actual structural support thats one layer inside the wall or a material that can handle the stress (old timber frames would break too) but even then most engineering is built for tollerances to support a weight of a building and its natural environment... not the pulling force of a train at an obtuse angle.
@@boxhead6177 oh ok, thank you, I didn't think about that
Wow I recommended this video months ago. All I have to say is FINALLY!
Also, what are your thoughts on Escanor's cruel sun? I mean vaporizing a lake and melting steel mere meters away seems impressive
Ooooh anime!
Yes please.
I always wondered what it would be like to obey anime logic.
Kyle's hair ain't falling in the intro even when he is upside-down.ANIME LOGIC
Damn Kyle, on fire in this one! Those Spider-Man puns were... Amazing.
At 0:39 it looks like Spider Man's bundle of silk lines is about the thickness of one of his fingers, which is about double the width of a pencil. Also it kinda looks like, instead of holding eight silk line ends, he's maybe attaching the last end to the next line with each line he shoots, and is kinda daisy-chaining them together. That might work. See ya in the Footnotes.
Wasnt the conductor applying breaks as well?
Doc Ock broke the breaks
Why are so many people here confusing breaks with brakes? I mean, it would be understandable on a flat-earther channel, but here?! It's not even the same pronunciation.
I love how goofy this is animated
what i want to know is how those web stick to the building and how strong, really, i've been wondering how people managed to clean those web.
Canonically, the webbing spontaneously dissolves after a short time. Doesn’t explain how the buildings don’t get torn apart, though.
He does slow the train with a few lines that snapped, and then throw extras, but taking into account the super spider that bit him had some 20 or so species mixed in, there is a likelihood he has a superwebbing. In the case where his webshooters aren't organic, we can't feasibly figure out how to test their strength without the science to make them. Unless we use the highly varied results we see in the shows and comics, like catching the space lander with the symbiote and JJJ Jr, or breaking against Rhino.
You forgot to account for the fact that he is digging his feet into the ground, leg pressing the train backward and shattering the tracks, absorbing more energy
Spiderman’s leg strength should be even higher than his arm/grip strength here so there’s a chance it could make a massive difference
But does he have Mario arms strong enough to pull against that force?
Tobey "Aquire"
-Kyle Hill 2019
I dont think thats how you spell “aquire” chief
@@meowdy3444 Sorry I meant acquire
Reverse Gamer its ok lmao the point got through
Could he stop Thomas the Tank Engine? Choo choo.
Ant Man can
you did not mentionned anything about the deceleration provided by the friction of the train on the rail, the two first attempt, first by destroying almost two hundred sleepers, and then first by ripping the walls of two building with "not enough cables"
I think it's a bit more complicated than that and the strength of the silk alone is not the only factor. It's important to remember that a train is more or less just a thin-walled, hollow metal tube. If you're trying to stop it by only applying force to it's front and not the rigid frame, it would most likely cause Spider Man to rip a hole in the hull and go right through it. Oh and also the silk would start ripping bricks out of the buildings it's attached to long before that happens.
EDIT: At 50mph which is NYC limit in the 2200/2400 CTA cars it's 49211772.54J not 187,000,000J
Just so you know, the weight you used was likely MTA's R160 line of subway cars.
However, Spiderman 2 actually reached out to the Chicago L (CTA) and dressed up a 6 car train on their elevated tracks. This means they were using 2400 and 2200 cars with average out to around 22500kg, much less than the estimated 38000kg but unfortunately still too little of a difference to change the conclusion.
Great video nonetheless!
Michael John Kelly to little of a difference ? It’s almost double....
This plus another comment that mentioned the average speed at which trains in manhattan travel, which is around 55 mph as supposed to the 80 mph that kyle used, could make enough difference to change the conclusion.
@@meowdy3444 that's true for the CTA in Chicago. But for the MTA in NYC it's 50mph, I'm an accident investigator for the MTA currently with Metro North. I've never worked in NYC, but 50mph is the limit in NYCT&SIR and that is not only the policy but if exceeded with or without accident an incident report is required to be filed by the engineers and contractor on duty and if it is deemed unnecessary endangerment an advancement is made on for their next physical and drug testing. So it's taken pretty seriously.
So 2/3 the weight and 3/5 the speed MAAAY just push this to a believable level... for Spiderman that is!!
49,211,772.54J is the force required to stop the train, less than a THIRD his estimation!!!!
Michael John Kelly hopefully this gets on footnotes
Kyle, thank you for the hard work you put in. We see it and we appreciate you. Keep doing you
“Average human mass of 62kg.”
American: looks up from 3rd cheeseburger in disgust
Web strength calculations aside, it would seem like that much force where the webs on either side contact the steel frame would be enough to turn it into cheese-wire. Spidey ending up almost stationary while the train ploughs onward, slicing it and everyone roughly in half.. I think the happier ending was probably the better choice though :)
You could have checked the toughness of one web strand with the green goblin bridge scene as he is capable of holding himself, MJ, and a cable car full of people in the air without fail. That will give you the MJ/M3 of his webs.
Great episodes like always, Kyles. In fact, I love all your spiderman episodes, they really get me into the Spider-verse.
All those puns though, they made me catch flies.
Could you try to take on the challenge of something JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure related? To see if that kind of strength is that plausible? Thanks ^^
Can you do Adamantium Vs Vibranium
IIRC that was an very early video in the series.
MonkeyJedi99 ok
This is extra funny because there's a scene in the new Spider-Man game where he tries to stop a train this way, and the web lines just snap.
Great show Kyle! Another angel you didn’t mentioned in the show but perhaps thought about is that stress of the brick walls that the spiderwebs are attached to, that could play a factor if the area of wall has been released from its place because of the amount of energy it allowed to be able to withstand the specific area force of the webbing. Even if the webbing could withstand 2000MJ/m^3, I would assume that the bricks would dislodge before hitting that point. I’d do the math, but for some reason I mix up which formulas to use at what times, yet I’m passing my physic class, amazingly.
You assumed that there are 1000 people in 6 coaches. If I understood you correctly, that would give approx 166 people in 1 coach. I don't think these many people were there in a coach
You can’t do this to me... DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I SACRIFICED??
Loved the episode, I looked up graphene toughness to compare it to spider silk and see if it could work, and found an interesting article about an experiment where researchers introduced graphene and carbon nanotubes into the spiders environment. They ingested it, and their new silk was up to 10x the toughness! So Peter just needs to eat some graphene and he should be fine
article: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170915165253.htm
That is cool, but humans should not eat graphene and especially not carbon nanotubes, but he could incorporate those into his web slingers, and then hope the train doesn't tear him in half though ^^
You forgot a few things for your calculations Kyle... Spiderman initially tried to slow the train by using his legs as the brakes and then attempted a single web line. While he gave up on using his legs, and the first web line broke, both attempts would have impacted the train's acceleration. Perhaps not by a lot, but both instances could have dropped your calculations a bit closer to 1.
Another thing to consider is that at the end of the scene the train is no longer accelerating despite the fact that Peter is no longer holding his webs. This would mean that while the train's speed was bumped up to 80 MPH, something went wrong and the engine itself had to have stopped providing power. Thus the train's speed would have been reducing due to friction as well.
Factored with the assumption that his webs are a bit stronger than those of the Darwin's Bark Spider, and that his lines were slightly larger than estimated (Even if only slightly)? How close to 1 this would bring the equation I'm not certain, but I'd be curious to see someone take this into account.
Just FYI that scene was cut for time. The initial webs broke and he shot more, a few times. Yeah that’s how he did it