The final half! *SPOILERS*

[Lone Soul]

Now THAT was a great action scene
The way he busted in and stopped the elevator...and I noticed those springs...meaning they wouldn't have got killed?

But im sure the masked man had to have also seen Clark...

I liked this episode even if it had many elements from SAW

oh and btw, the second they walked into an elevator moving up I had a gut feeling it would start falling (having been to disney world tower of terror a few eyars back haaha)

So yeah. Mabye Lionel isn't as bad as we all thought...

"Son"...:eek:
Hmm..

[bluegayle]

Originally posted by Lone Soul

So yeah. Mabye Lionel isn't as bad as we all thought...
Hmm..

No, he still is bad. I agree with Clark, it would be more like Lionel to hold this secret over them if it benefits him in some way. (Assuming that wasn't Jor-El talking)

After all, we have to remember, and assume (mostly 99.9999%) that what he showed to Jonathan Kent was done to harm him or get him to favor Lionel when he was a senator, even if he didn't expect JK to die from it.

[LOONEY]

the springs are for a gentle stop when its NOT HURLING towards the ground.........what do you think this is A ROADRUNNER cartoon it hits it and bounces up and down....DUH

[udtiger]

Had Clark not stopped the elevator, Martha and Lionel would have bought it.

That was a great scene! Two problems: 1) Lionel and Martha would have been pinned to the top of the elevator; and, 2) Clark stopping it in the manner he did would have likely had the same effect/outcome as if the elevator had hit the springs.

I know physics has no place here and I am just nitpicking. Did not make me enjoy the scene (or the episode) any less.

[ScrappyTheOwl]

Originally posted by udtiger
1) Lionel and Martha would have been pinned to the top of the elevator;

You sure? Why wouldn't gravity keep them on the ground?

[musictech]

Originally posted by udtiger
Had Clark not stopped the elevator, Martha and Lionel would have bought it.

That was a great scene! Two problems: 1) Lionel and Martha would have been pinned to the top of the elevator; and, 2) Clark stopping it in the manner he did would have likely had the same effect/outcome as if the elevator had hit the springs.

I know physics has no place here and I am just nitpicking. Did not make me enjoy the scene (or the episode) any less.

Well if you want to get really technical, Clark stopping it like he did should have had the same effect as if they had slammed into the ground. Decelerating a persons body from the speeds they were traveling to zero in a few inches would really be like slamming into the ground anyway. He would have had to catch it and decelerate it, instead of the sudden stop that he did.


Originally posted by ScrappyTheOwl
You sure? Why wouldn't gravity keep them on the ground?

Same reason you come out of your seat slightly when you go down a hill on a rollercoaster.

[HalJordan4184]

Yeah, they should have died, and it was plain bad writing that they didn't. But hey, it's Smallville, I don't expect good writing most of the time.

[photogirl]

Maybe Lionel is keeping Clark's secret and trying to be friendly towards he and Martha so he can get close to Martha...

[thedarknight]

Originally posted by musictech
Well if you want to get really technical, Clark stopping it like he did should have had the same effect as if they had slammed into the ground. Decelerating a persons body from the speeds they were traveling to zero in a few inches would really be like slamming into the ground anyway. He would have had to catch it and decelerate it, instead of the sudden stop that he did.



Same reason you come out of your seat slightly when you go down a hill on a rollercoaster.

Its not the same thing actually. Clark was able to absorb the force from the building momentum, because of his super strength.

If you drop a ball directly onto your palm flat, without trying to catch it, the ball will bounce off your hand. But if you try to catch it the ball will remain in your hand because you absorbed the enough of the force.


And its not the same thing as a rollercoaster either, you lift off your seat because your mass is considerbly less then the rollercoaster, so the rollercoaster gains more speed relative to you when your going down the hill.

[HalJordan4184]

That's not even close to accurate at all.

THere is a thing called inertia, which you are completely ignoring, as well as the effects of rapid acceleration, whether positive or negative, on the human body.

That elevator feel stories upon stories, building speed, and consequently, force the whole way down. Now, whether that elevator impacts Clark or the ground doesn't matter. The ground will absorb that same amount of force Clark did. IE, enough to bring that elevator to a sudden stop, crushing it, and flattening any occupants inside. Clark catching that elevator, is no different than me driving sixty miles an hour into a brick wall. That wall will absorb all the impact, but I'm still dead. WHY?

Well, there are actually multiple impacts in that type of crash. Anyone in FIRE/EMS work should be familiar with these. The first impact is of course, the elevator into Clark. Fair enough, Clark is a solid, invulnerable, super strong guy. He's not moving, and that elevator wants to keep moving. It's called inertia. Basically, universally, all things are lazy, if they are stopped, they want to stay stopped, if they are moving they want to stay moving. Well, that elevator want's to keep moving, resulting in it's crumpling. Well, that leaves Martha and Lionel with a bit of a problem. They want to keep moving too. That's the second impact, Lionel and Martha, into the elevator floor, and consequently, Clark. Well, you see, our bodies have a lot of empty space, filled with gas and liquid. But since we aren't one solid form, we have another impact coming up. Lionel and Martha's internal organs, which are still travelling at the speed the elevator was when it impacted Clark, against Lionel and Martha's bodies. This would rupture their internal organs, severely bruise and deform their brains, and wreak havoc with their bones, which will snap and twist every which way, following the path of least resistance. But wait, there is more. Being that the bodies can't keep moving forward, they rebound. THis causes further internal damage, due to the organs and body repeatedly colliding. The result, Lionel and Martha's insides, are mush.

Inertia is also the reason Lionel and Martha should have been pinned at the top of the elevator the whole trip down. Let's use the roller coaster as an example again.

When you crest the hill in a roller coaster, gravity is pulling you back down the hill. As you make that crest, when you hit the top, gravity wants to keep you there. But because of forward momentum, and no stopping mechanism, you keep going with the car. But the car is on a fixed track, and you aren't. Your body wants to go in a straight line. It doesn't want to change direction, that takes force to do. Again, following the path of least resistance. That roller coaster car start's going down, and your body is still trying to go up. So as the car falls, you continue your climb, and forward movement. Well, thank God for seatbelts, shoulder harnesses and lap bars. These actually use the forc eof the car moving away from you down track, to keep you with the car. As a result, you experience a brief weightlessness as you try to keep going up and away, while the car tries to go down. But you get pulled back to the car, and accelerate downward. At the bottom of the hill, you encounter a brief moment of G forces compressing you, as you are still trying move downhill, when the car goes up or on a turn, or straightens out.

[allstrange]

I'm not a native speaker so I don't know all of the correct terms, but I'll try to make this short and sweet. So far, no one has been able to answer any of the questions completely correctly.


Originally posted by HalJordan4184

That elevator feel stories upon stories, building speed, and consequently, force the whole way down. Now, whether that elevator impacts Clark or the ground doesn't matter. The ground will absorb that same amount of force Clark did.

First, the elevator doesn't build force as it comes down, but rather, momentum p which is determined as
p = mv
where m is mass and v is your velocity. Obviously, when you're free falling, you build speed and hence your momentum increases. Force is determined as F = ma, where, as I will later show you, both the mass and the acceleration a are constants.

Now, absorbment of force is not the reason why Clark would crush the people inside the elevator. Rather, it is a matter of impulse, or a synergy of the force F (or rather momentum p) needed to stop the elevator and the amount of time t used to bring it to a complete halt. The time-factor is the one that counts. It could be this is what you meant, but I wasn't sure what you were getting at. If Clark slows the elevator down during a period of say 10 seconds instead of the 0,5 seconds he did, there would be no problem with inertia. There were also some remarks made about the elastics of Clark when compared with a concrete floor, but this also has to do with impulse (the time to stop the elevator increases if it encounters an element that is elastic in nature).

You are right about inertia though. Even if the elevator stops, doesn't mean that Martha and Lionel do too, let alone their internal organs.


Originally posted by HalJordan4184

Inertia is also the reason Lionel and Martha should have been pinned at the top of the elevator the whole trip down.

Second, this is just plain wrong. If Martha and Lionel would be pinned to the top of the elevator, that would mean that they are affected by a different gravitational acceleration than the elevator. But as we all know, all objects obey the same law, that is Newton's second law of F = ma, or in gravitational terms, G = mg. g is an acceleration constant that is pretty much the same all over the world (slightly different depending on how far you are from the center of the Earth). If we consider the elevator situation as a free fall, both the elevator and the people inside it are affected by the same gravitational acceleration g. So they would only appear weightless (when juxtaposed with each other), since they are moving at the same acceleration (all of the 0G scenes of the movie Apollo 13 were done like this, they flew in an airplane which then free fell several kilometers to the ground, creating the illusion of 0G inside the plane). The only way Mionel would be pinned to the top would be if the elevator were accelerating faster than they are. Remember acceleration creates force, F = ma.

You can also make this assumption based on the theory of the preservation of energy. They first have potential energy in the form of
E(p) = mgh,
where m is their mass, h their distance from 0-level (the ground) and g is the gravitational acceleration. By the end of their trip towards the concrete below, they will have lost all of their potential energy and turned it into kinetic energy
E(k) = 1/2mv^2
where m is again their mass and v their final velocity. Now if energy doesn't dissapear anywhere, these two types of energy are equivalent:
E(p) = E(k) or
mgh = 1/2mv^2 || divide by mass, times two
2gh = v^2
So you see, how massive an object is has no meaning when calculating it's final velocity. The only thing that matters is how high they are (or how aerodynamic they are, but in this case we can disregard that). Hence, Martha, Lionel and the elevator have the same final velocity.

Or do they? Nope. See, the elevator is connected to bars on both sides of its shaft. These create friction, hence the sounds we hear during the fall and the sparks that fly from the sides of the elevator. So, now we have a new force that is in fact trying to keep the elevator exactly where it is. Of course it's not succeeding in doing it, but it is enough to count it as an actual force. This force of friction F(f) creates an acceleration upwards and hence takes away from the net force which is of course down:
F(net) = G - F(f).
This force of friction is enough to stop the elevator from being in free fall. Hence Martha, Lionel and the elevator are affected not solely by the gravitational constant g, but by the net forces of G and friction. Therefore, they can not be pushed to the top of the elevator, since they have not surpassed the needed acceleration point of g. So finally, there you have it - why they shouldn't have been pinned to the top of the elevator.


Originally posted by HalJordan4184

When you crest the hill in a roller coaster, gravity is pulling you back down the hill. As you make that crest, when you hit the top, gravity wants to keep you there.

Third, gravity never wants to keep you anywhere but down. If you meant that when you're standing on top of that crest, you are static, then you are correct. But the force of gravity never ceases to affect you. It always pulls you down. What is actually trying to pull you out of your seat is the centrifugal force F(c) which is directed to the center of the rotational circle. The strength of F(c) is determined by Newton's second law:
F(c) = ma = mv^2/r
where m is your mass, v the tangentical velocity at which you're moving and r is the radius of the circle, the arc of which you are traveling on. Here, when you consider the net force F(net) which affects you at the top of the crest, it is as follows:
F(net) = F(c) - G
F(net) = m(v^2/r - g)
So you see, the situation you describe on a rollercoaster is quite different from the situation in the elevator. But you are correct in saying that it is the "slowness" of mass that creates the upward pull at the apex of a rollercoaster. The variables that are more central (than gravity) to how high you'd go if you didn't have seatbelts on are the radius of the circle and, most importantly, the velocity with which you hit that apex.

I hope this clears things up. This is just basic mechanics. Oh, and by the way, there was some discussion a few weeks back about that trip Clark did to Honduras. I measured the distance he ran from Google Earth and divided that with the time it took for him to do it and came up with something along the lines of 350 km/s. That's about 0.12 percent of the speed of light. So don't worry, he's nowhere near as fast as he's going to be and he's not breaking any laws of physics. Yet.

Edit: I forgot to mention that when you really think about it, Clark should've actually gone through the elevator's floor. That chicken wire that they had for a floor wouldn't have been able to stand that much pressure - which, of course is p =F/A, where p is pressure, F force and A the area onto which this force is implemented (and in this case, the area of Clark's hand).

[Day of Reckoning]

Bravo allstrange, you hit the nail on the head. Man I knew there was a reason I was taking Dynamics right now at school. :D Anyways, that was right and if yall watch a replay of the episode you will see that Martha and Lionel are actually gripping the bottom of the elevator with their hands even though they don't need to to stay there.

[novec]

Yup, well put by allstrange. But when it comes to Clark's strengths and their influence on the rest of the world, we have to think out of the box. But that's why we watch Smallville in the first place, isn't it? ;)

He obviously has some degree of control over gravity and momentum, and not only that of himself. For one, he has a nasty habit of lifting heavy things by one end (Chloe's car in "Truth", the tractor in "Transference" etc.), and no matter how strong he is, he would have just tipped over if he didn't have some other kind of power. More relevant to this thread, he would have reduced Chloe to mush when he went into "Super-Clark mode" and ran her to de-frosting in "Arrival" if he'd just been plain fast.

The best thing is, though, that there's no right or wrong when Superman's involved, and for that, we have many great writers and cartoonists to thank.

[allstrange]

Well novec, I wasn't trying to find logic or physics in Smallville, I was just trying to right some misconception which seem to prevail here on the boards. :)

By the way, I re-read my post and want to make sure everyone understands that Martha, Lionel and the elevator do in fact have the same final velocity, but it's not the one that they would have if they free fell from the height h where they were in the beginning. Just to make things clear(er). ;)

[puddinpiester]

My head hurts now. I am better a jump starting hearts than understanding all these inertia, velocity, momentum equations. But, I am truly inpressed that you know this. Still, this is SV and all is well regardless of the likelihood that all is, in fact, well. Like Pa Kent told Lex at the football game where Whitney was quarterbacking for the Sharks, "I just accept that they {miracles} happen".