I know they’re comic books and movies, but c’mon. When you think about it, Spider-Man’s webs are ridiculous.
Ever been fishing? How do you get your line out into the water when you’re casting? You need a sinker, right? Otherwise, the line would not go very far. If you have a wind blowing against you, then it could even end up going in the opposite direction.
Same thing with Spider-Man’s webs. OK, maybe it’s a bit heavier than actual spider silk, and I can believe that it would travel with enough momentum to hit and stick to things in fairly close range. But he is shown shooting the webs great distances. In reality, they would be quick victims of air resistance and would just fall down or be blown around. Imagine trying to create some sort of gun to shoot string or nylon line or anything like that even just across the street. A simple thought experiment reveals it to be an instant failure.
But it gets worse. Not only is Spider-Man shooting threads across great distances, but he is doing so very fast. Those webs would actually have to be traveling at hypersonic speeds, or something close to it, to fly that far so fast. Hypersonic strings, mm hmm.
Thoughts?
Note: I would not call his other powers ridiculous. Clings to walls? Makes sense. Spidey sense? Fine. I don’t have a problem with superheroes’ powers violating the laws of physics per se. The problem is when the elements of those powers violate the laws of physics in a way that is prima facie absurd, as with the web example. Here’s another: it’s not absurd that Superman can fly–it’s just a power he has. It’s like magic. But what is absurd are the wings of Falcon in the latest Captain America movie. Those wings could never work, and the way he flies is absurd (his legs would dangle down unless he has a really strong core–Pilates?). I guess what I’m saying is, “Don’t come back and tell me it’s just a superhero movie!”
I think the webs are thought of as iron cables, rather than silken threads. As spider silk is tough enough to hold fairly large insects, Spider-Man’s webbing is like a heavy cable that can hold even fairly strong humans. The “splat” effect is slightly inconsistent, but if he were shooting iron cables, wind resistance wouldn’t be an issue.
However, I stand aside for the more techno-babble-able.
Well, if you are saying that their weight is what propels them, then Spider-Man would have to be storing hundreds of pounds of heavy material on his body. Although he is strong enough to do so, he is not shown carrying that much bulk. The web shooters are pretty tiny, after all, and it’s not as though he has a backpack of extra material.
I’ve always had issues with the fact that Spider-Man never seems to aim the webs that he fires and that somehow he is able to release them when he chooses to do so.You never see him miss even though he is moving forward while he shoots them
You also never see one of his gloves coming off and sticking to the webbing when he attempts to let it go. You would think that his webbing would occasionally stick to his costume.
There’s a common misconception that he has some kind of spinarets to produce the webs, but it’s only a little finger operated bulb under his glove that shoots the stuff out from a tube that goes up his wrist. He manages to contain an incredible amount of that web stuff in that little device. We’d have to assume that his spider strenth enables a liquid stream of material to be ejected at incredibly high speeds which then solidifies in the air. Perhaps it is then like the straw penetrating a tree in a tornado, stiffening in the air at high velocity it carries a long distance (probably exagerrated by those comic book artists and writers who take great liberties in recounting these tales).
Am I misrecollecting, or did the movies go down the path of having him shoot natural webbing out of his body somehow?
Which is a frequent plot point in the comics when they want a villain to escape - Spidey webs him up, but gets distracted by a bomb or a burning building, and by the time he gets back, the webs have decayed and the villain is loose again.
It’s in-canon that his spider-sense guides his aim. That said, he should be able to “aim” just about any projectile with similar accuracy, even outperforming Captain America tossing his shield or Hawkeye firing arrows, but I’m not sure if this has ever been explored in detail. I recall a mid-eighties moment where he improvised a projectile weapon out of a typewriter roller (ask your grandpa) and hit a guy in the head from across a room, but in the same story arc was defeated in hand-to-hand by Daredevil, so consistency is not the norm, I gather.
But…that’s the only possible answer. “What’s two plus two, and don’t come back and tell me it’s four.”
Sure, lots of these things are absolutely impossible. The Iron Man armor, for instance: it might stop bullets…but when the Hulk smashes Ton Stark to the ground, the armor isn’t going to protect against internal acceleration injuries. (As his liver smashes his spleen to mush…)
Daredevil and Batman leaping off tall buildings, and swinging about on perfectly ordinary rappelling cables: not possible! Captain America’s shield returning to him when he throws it: not possible. (Thor’s hammer is magic, but the shield isn’t.)
Where does the extra biomass come from when Hulk gets bigger and heavier?
(How does James Bond dodge all those bullets in “Quantum of Solace?” At one point, he doesn’t even have so much as a car door for protection – and car doors aren’t enough to stop bullets anyway. The baddies fire hundreds of rounds at extremely close range; can they really all miss?)
The coin of the realm is suspension of disbelief. Without that, these films (and books, and comics) don’t work worth a damn.
You might as well over-think Charlotte’s Web. (Talking pigs? Intelligent spiders? What is this nonsense?)
Sure it is. High acceleration doesn’t damage things; what damages things is different parts accelerating by different amounts. When an ordinary person wearing ordinary clothes falls off a building, they’re injured or killed because their outer parts start accelerating before their inner parts do. Stark’s armor, though, is fitted with his patented repulsor beam technology, to accelerate his innards at the exact same time and same amount as his outtards, so he’s unhurt.
And the model I prefer for Spider-Man’s web production, but which I don’t think any comic book or movie has used, is that he does have a biological silk-producing organ, but it’s in a really embarrassing place, and he can’t shoot it with great force. He can, however, harvest it, mix it with a simple solvent, and bottle it up in mechanical sprayers. This way, we can avoid the necessity of him being a metatechnological supergenius in addition to his other powers, and explain why he’s never sold the formula for his webbing, while still avoiding giving him spinnerets in a silly place like his wrists.
So when Lois Lane is falling off a skyscraper and Superman catches her in midair, the fact that he’s suddenly stopped her acceleration means that she’d splatter all over his super-arms. The notion of “catching” someone who’s falling and thus saving them is a phallus-y.
In short, yeah, the answer really is that these are fiction movies and the laws of physics only apply insofar as the movie-makers want them to.
Except that Supes has an “aura of invulnerability” that he can put around objects and people he catches. This allows him to do things like lift an aircraft carrier out of the water, horizontally, and it holds together in one piece. It should hold Lois in one piece too.
Although the idea of Cyclops lifehacking by using his optic blasts to fly everywhere…backwards, with two rearview mirrors attached to his head…is quite hilarious, to me at least.
