Funnimetric

When my friends at Asymmetric asked me to vet the movie Spiderman for scientific error, I had to laugh at the coincidence as I had previously been asked by producer Avi Arad to consult for the movie. I can’t deny that I was both flattered by Mr. Arad’s offer and tempted by the proposed compensation, which would have funded my research for several months, but, alas, I was working on my lunar-borne stimulated emission beam or “laser,” a device that, when finished, will be summoned terrestrially for use in outdoor PowerPoint slide shows, and I couldn’t afford to focus my attention on what is, essentially, an entertainment.

However, I sometimes combat the pervasive ignorance of things scientific in the general population by wrapping my expertise around the occasional frivolity and agreed, therefore, to evaluate Spiderman 3- provided two prerequisites were met: I needed a to view the movie alone in order to avoid the primitive whooping and hollering of the non-scientists that make up the bulk of the American movie audience and I needed the ability to stop the movie on command to allow for a thorough frame-by frame-analysis. The Asymmetric staff agreed, renting a theater and obtaining a pristine reel. My findings follow:

First, I must deal with a question that’s asked of me at every conference or cocktail party (so often in fact, that my eyes now reflexively roll by the word “pass.”) It has to do with the feasibility of Spiderman having acquired his powers in the first place and the inquiry is often phrased: “can a spider pass on its special abilities to a normal human?” The short answer is “yes.” The longer answer is “yes, but only under perfect conditions and probably not as one would imagine.” Let me explain. If you’ve taken any biology past the seventh grade, you’re familiar with the term “chromosome adhesion” or, as the non-serious call it, “sticky DNA.” CH occurs when irradiated chromosomes disassemble within the host body and blend with the host’s genetic material. So, yes: A spider’s muscle density or sensory acuity (Spidey Sense is not precognition. It merely allows a Spider-Human blend [“Spider man,” if you must] to use its heightened senses to predict likely events. For example, a baseball thrown from behind a Spider-man would make a noise, effect the air around itself, which, in turn, would cause a bird’s wings to flutter, and so forth. A spider is able to “sense” these triggers before a human, although a human would eventually do so as well) may certainly be amongst those traits, but it’s much more likely that a blend would result in a mix of what society would deem positive traits (jumping, sensory acuity, etc.) and negative traits such as hirsuteness and poor table manners. Spider-man is, therefore, a best-case DH scenario.

And one need only to study other documented DH occurrences to see the unlikelihood of a Spider-man as presented to us by graphic prose genius and DH idealist Stan Lee. In 1968, a Joe Snuffy was conducting experiments at his lab (alone, as it happens) when he was bitten by a radioactive potato bug. He did, in fact acquire the ability to fly, but this ability was of little use when he decided to commence his crime-fighting career, as he could only fly in a straight line and for short distances. In fact, Snuffy would often fly into glass windows, an occurrence of which left him incapacitated and garden-ridden. He spent the rest of his days alone, penniless, and subsisting on the occasional sugar water given to him by strangers.

Has anybody ever heard of Dung Beatle man, Rolly Polly man, or the Daddy Long Legs Man? No, of course not, yet they’re all past examples of CH. America, it seems, loves a winner.

Another part of the movie sure to spark debate centers on the Flint Marko incident (Sandman). Many will wonder, for example, how a person is able to see with eyes made of sand. I must admit to having gone into my library for this one, but my diligence eventually rewarded me with some plausible explanations. Of the two initial possibilities here, one can be dismissed right away. A colleague of mine suggested that Sandman suffered from phantom-sense syndrome or the condition whereby a person’s mind still believes it possesses a lost stimuli receptor. The sufferer essentially imagines the sense based on past experience. I discounted this theory immediately as it was evident from the movie that the Sandman could react to non-referenced visual stimuli.

That left me the possibility that he Sandman’s particle reassembly allowed him to manipulate the sand’s properties in such a way as to approximate neural processes. This theory is still in its hypothesis stage pending the unfreezing of Stan Lee’s brain.

What about the locket? Why did everything in the particle disassembly chamber disintegrate except for the man’s locket containing a picture of his daughter? It’s tempting to dismiss this as a Hollywood story device, but according to several particle disassembly textbooks, certain metal alloys may indeed resist the particle disassembly (PD) process. It seems that if spaced correctly, the atomic structure of an alloy may deflect the electrons emitted from the PD process, allowing it to retain its atomic structure. Some research on my part discovered that locket s manufactured in 1962, the year of Marko’s “accident,” were typically a silver-copper alloy. Sure enough, upon stopping the film and examining the frame, I noticed the characteristic blood red color of Silver dichromate, to which, of course, silver sulfate is converted after exposure to potassium dichromate, trace amounts of which may have been present in the sand pit. Silver-copper alloys are notorious PD resistors and a PD pit would normally be cleared of any such compounds prior to experimentation.

I was able to find my way to the exits after the theater burst into flame, but my research had to end, pending the investigation and the securing of another reel. Digital may be safer for my purposes, actually.

I won’t leave without commenting on one non-scientific point with which the makers of Spiderman lose some credibility and, frankly, may even represent a libel upon my profession. I know of no scientist (certainly not one in PD) who would ever conduct a PD experiment in an open field without at least 13 feet of vertical fencing and three armed guards (two is the minimum, but scientists gladly accept the costs accompanying the added redundancy if it lessens the chance of an accidental PD). The movie showed the lead scientist, as attractive as she was (as are most) to be, therefore, incompetent, an unlikely characteristic of a PD engineer.

Nobody likes to remember Ladybug Man!

I guess Dung Beetle man didn't fit Americans' preconceptions of a superhero.