/sci/ - Science & Math

Hoy, /sci/

This is stupid comic book and thought experiment shit, so feel free to ignore it. It's poorly worded word salad anyway, so only bother if you like theoretical nonsense.

Lets talk forces.

There's this guy. We'll call this random rube, "Ruben." Ruben has this amazing power. Ruben's power is not unlimited, so there's a finite expression of what he can and cannot do. Ruben has just enough power that he can suck kinetic energy out of objects with small mass and reduce and minimize impact and penetration by bullets before they penetrate his skin.

How? Comic book science. He can because he can. What are its limitations? Small caliber pistols and hand guns. Whether they're single slugs or shotgun blasts makes no difference so long as each individual object impacting with his field equals less than the kinetic energy he can cancel from each.

And yet, Ruben has a problem. Ruben's power is really good against objects that were given a single shocking amount of energy and don't sustain themselves, but he could not do more than subtract a little from the incoming forces of a rocket, which has its own propulsion, or a knife. Ruben could not really stop some dude with a spear intent on impaling him. Reduce the thrust that touches his aura by the amount of a handgun round? Sure.

Now we could easily calculate and give numbers to HOW MUCH kinetic energy Ruben could stop cold in newtons or joules, I'm sure. For extra credit, we could do that. But,

What specific imaginary comic book superpower would let someone do the same thing for stab attempts, arrows or things relying on their mass to stay in motion? There's a difference between a missile fired from a gun and, say, a safe falling from the sky to crush a dude.

Short of absolute control of gravity itself or magnetism, what sort of make-em-up superpower would let a guy like Ruben stop a dude with a steel mace from caving in his skull? That would use the abundance of mass against it?