The Secret Science of Superheroes

Mark Lorch, Andy Miah

• Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781788012652
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Organic Chemistry
• Index: Biological Sciences

Ever wondered what a superhero eats for breakfast? Do they need a special diet to feed their superpowers? The odd metabolisms of superheroes must mean they have strange dietary needs, from the high calorie diets to fuel flaming bodies and super speeds, to not so obvious requirements for vitamins and minerals.

The Secret Science of Superheroes looks at the underpinning chemistry, physics and biology needed for their superpowers. Individual chapters look at synthesising elements on demand, genetic evolution and what superhero suits could be made of. By exploring these topics, the book introduces a wide range of scientific concepts, from protein chemistry to particle physics for a general scientifically interested audience.

With contributions from leading science communicators the book hopes to answer some of these important questions rather than debunk or pick holes in the science of superheroes.

CHAPTER 1

The Breakfasts of Superheroes

MARK LORCH

School of Mathematics and Physical Science, University of Hull, HU6 7RX, UK

Email: [email protected]

1.1 INTRODUCTION

One of the most obvious but overlooked questions that surrounds the science of being a superhero concerns the nutritional needs that would be required to have the capacity of superhuman powers. After all, a handful of oat cakes for Peter Parker (AKA Spider-Man), as he dashes off on a day of acrobatic crime fighting across Metropolis, just aren’t going to cut the mustard. There has to be something else going on. And Peter Parker knows it. He must know that his daring deeds are only possible if he is fuelled by a proper diet. The oat cake breakfast may just be part of his cover story, but Spider-Man’s breakfast is just the tip of the iceberg. After all, if Olympic athletes need a support team inspecting every morsel that passes their lips, then there must be an army of nutritionists monitoring the dietary requirements of the great crime fighting squads. It may not crop up in the comics and movies, but I bet there’s a course entitled ‘Nutrition for the Gifted – 101’ on the curriculum at hero schools. Education about healthy eating can’t start early enough.

1.2 FOOD FOR ALL

Before we get stuck into the nutritional needs of the superpowered, let’s remind ourselves of what mere mortals in this reality tuck into. Mrs Average and Mr Ordinary need about 2000–2500 Calories¹ per day.¹ Now, compare that to the most athletic amongst us (Table 1.1). Many professional athletes feed on 3000–4000 Calories per day. Whilst some Olympic swimmers, at the height of their training regimes, claim to increase their diet from an already hefty 5000–6000 Calories to a stomach stretching 10 000 Calories each day!²

The difference between the athletes’ diet and those of the average Jo and Joe is subtler than just energy intakes; there’s also a significant change in nutritional balance. The calories fuel an athlete’s daily activities, but the machinery that powers their achievements is muscle, which is made of protein. Consequently, the athletes must increase their protein intake by as much as four times over that of Mr Ordinary. In short, they change their diet to take into account their activities, providing them with the nutrients to build a body prepared for the task ahead.

Just as athletes tweak their diets to feed the demands of their sport, superheroes must take into account their body’s needs. Of course, many of our superheroes act in ways akin to real world athletes and their diets might well be very similar to Olympians. But there are some unusual cases who will have extraordinary nutritional needs to go along with their strange powers. This may be the result of the massive amount of energy they expel, but in other cases heroes need to remember that, with great powers come great side-effects.

1.3 A SUPER SIDE-EFFECT

Consider poor old Ben Grimm, also known as The Thing, a man trapped inside a craggy orange hide. His powers and stone exoskeleton might afford him fabulous stamina, strength and resistance to injury, but at the cost of a monstrous form. There is also something else to take into account … His stony exterior makes him impervious to ultraviolet radiation. There’s no tanning or sunburn for The Thing. Well, that’s not such a terrible side-effect, you might think. After all, if you’re a big orange stony hulk (with a small H) the least of your worries will be an inability to soak up the rays whilst sunning yourself on a Caribbean vacation. However, without exposure to UV, Ben will suffer from a vitamin deficiency that results in fatigue and muscle weakness and he will even have trouble thinking – all things a superhero really should do his best to avoid.

Most vitamins are synthesized biologically through a series of enzyme-controlled reactions that start with basic building blocks and, by stitching them together here and nicking a bond there, the final vitamin is formed. Sometimes an organism might be missing enzymes that allows it to make a vitamin, but that’s generally OK because some other beast, bug or plant that we consume will have made it, transferring it into us when we eat. A perfect example of super-failing in humans (along with guinea pigs, capybaras and bats) is vitamin C, which we really need, but can’t generate. So instead we need to get it from our food.

However, vitamin D is rather unusual. Nowhere on the planet is there an organism that can make it without external help; they all require energy from the sun to smash open a ring in a molecule called 7-dehydrocholesterol (Figure 1.1). This process frees up the new compound to twist (in a process called isomerization) into the shape of vitamin D, and this all goes on in your skin when you are out in the sun. So, if you have the misfortune of being covered in orange stone, then there is no way the sunlight will reach the 7-dehydrocholesterol. Instead you would need to ensure your diet includes plenty of the required vitamin.

Figure 1.1 Our bodies can’t quite finish making vitamin D by themselves; the final step needs an energetic ‘kick’ from ultraviolet light. This breaks a bond in one of the rings of a cholesterol-like molecule, allowing the ring to unravel, forming vitamin D. © Andy Brunning 2017.

Spend plenty of time outside and you’ll probably manufacture all the vitamin D you need (assuming you don’t cover yourself up). However, the recommended daily allowance assumes you generally lock yourself away in a dark room (reading comic books?), live in northern latitudes (where the sun isn’t so strong), and cover yourself in factor 50 sun cream. So, the suggestion is that you should eat 15 micrograms of vitamin D each day. Ben probably needs to take in this amount as well, which means that a breakfast of oily fish² (kippers maybe?) and he will be just fine.

1.4 FAST FOOD AND FLASH DIETS

Beyond simple strength and energy, superheroes who are super speedy also have unique nutritional needs in the morning. Let’s take Marvel’s Quicksilver as a start. In his original incarnation he maxed out at the speed of sound, although since then his powers have grown. From recent footage some clever clogs has calculated Quicksilver can whiz along at well over ten times the speed of sound (12 000 kph) over short distances.³ But, let’s keep things realistic and work out what he might consume at breakfast to power a 30 minute Mach 1 run?³ Luckily, sport scientists have a handy equation for calculating energy usage for runners,⁴ so what happens if we apply it to our supersonic hero?

First, we need to work out how much oxygen our heroic athlete uses. By hooking up regular athletes to monitors whilst they are resting, we know that they generally use 3.5 mL of oxygen per minute per kg of body mass. As we all know, once we start running we need more oxygen and start breathing harder, so we need take this into account as well. The volume of oxygen used in a minute is known as VO₂ and is calculated as follows:

VO₂ = 3.5 + (0.2 × speed in meters per minute) when running on the flat⁴

So, our runner speeding along at the speed of sound (20 400 meters per minute) uses:

VO₂ = 3.5 + (0.2 × 20 400) = 4083.5 mL kg⁻¹ min⁻¹

According to Marvel Directories, Quicksilver weighs 80 kg (175 lb).⁵ So, on his (quick) morning jog, he’d need 327 litres of oxygen per minute (80 kg × 4083.5 mL kg⁻¹ min⁻¹ = 327 L min⁻¹). Because air is about 20% oxygen, that means he’s breathing in 1633 litres of air every 60 seconds!⁵

To utilize the oxygen he needs some chemical energy, which comes from food, and we know that works out at 5 kcal per litre of oxygen used. So we have another bit of maths:

5 kcal × 327 L min⁻¹ = 1635 kcal min⁻¹

This gives Quicksilver needing 49 050 kcal for his half-hour morning run. If you look back at Table 1.1, you may notice that this is much more than you’d eat in a day, but how much more?

Table 1.1Daily diet of humans.

	Mrs Average	Mr Ordinary	Pro-Rugby guy	Mr Olympic gymnast	Tennis-man	Pool-man
Energy (kcal)	2000	2500	3000	3...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• Chapter 1 The Breakfasts of Superheroes
• Chapter 2 The Evolution of Superpowers
• Chapter 3 The Hallmarks of Hulk
• Chapter 4 Supervillainy 101: Choosing Between a Zombie, Vampire or Werewolf Apocalypse
• Chapter 5 How to Build a Super Soldier
• Chapter 6 The Real World Super Metal
• Chapter 7 Is It a Ceramic? Is It Graphene? No It’s Vibranium!
• Chapter 8 The Science of Super Suits
• Chapter 9 Why Doesn’t the Invisible Woman Bump Into Things?
• Chapter 10 The Flash: The Fastest Man on Fire
• Chapter 11 You’ve Got to Learn to Be More Flexible: The Mechanics of Marvellous
• Chapter 12 Big Data, Big Heroes and Bad Computers
• Chapter 13 The Wonder-ous Truth: The Workings of Wonder Woman’s Lasso
• Chapter 14 Super Frequently Asked Questions
• Subject Index