The Shield as CoR so close to 1.0 that its only real limiting factor is the fact it is flying through the air. A follow-up to this video would be one that includes the aerodynamics of a frisbee, and how it relates to Cap's Shield.
I got a question, even if it doesn't get a full video: if a camera could move alongside the flash how would it look? Just like sped up running? Or what?
that would explain why it bounces of hard objects, but how about bouncing of the soft torso of a human. The body should have absorbed most of the kinetic energy on impact.
It's a magic shield, it's a magic shield.It can bounce around,it can stop bullet rounds,it can deflect magic lights,it can stop baddies left and right.Coz it is a magic shield.
in the original canon, the shield is an alloy of vibranium and adamantium. this whole "pure vibranium" nonsense was just done for the movies and the cartoons. In the original canon, vibranium is not indestructible, not even close; it could be deformed or destroyed by heat, energy blasts of various types, and some chemical reactions.
If the shield its actually indestructible, then it wouldn't bounce, instead it would destroy whatever it hits. for example, it would go thru the wall instead of bounce in it.
At the time of my comment: Kyle and the guys are busy with the Muskwatch eps (historic Falcon Heavy reusable main rockets and booster launch) and separate Because Science content to release content that coincides with the BP red carpet world premiere. Would've been a good tie-up though!
The weirdness also implies that the material is anisotropic; that is, the properties are different when applied in different directions. For example, the front face of the shield dissipates energy from impacts without rebounding. Some writers explain that the vibranium stores this energy like a battery and releases it when the edges strike things. This explains some of the more ridiculous bank shots Cap manages, since the shield actually can use this stored energy to have a higher velocity after the bounce than before it.
Agreed, especially considering that bullets do not ricochet off Cap's shield, unlike Kyle said. (See Captain America: The First Avenger, shield introduction scene for example.) On the other hand, this presents a problem when using the shield's edge to beat and strike targets. I.e. why doesn't the shield bounce in reaction like the Absent-minded Professor's Flubber shoes? The intensity could be controlled by arguing that energy can only be released from the shield edge in certain amounts. However, we do not see any bounce or extra energy release when Cap uses his shield to beat up his enemies, including Iron Man.
What about that scene in The Winter Soldier where he jumps out the elevator and lands on the shield? Wouldn't he bounce back up instead of staying on the ground like he does in the movie?
Because he is spread on the more wide part of the shield and not the edge. Remember that you can increase force by refining the impact. Like A hammer bs a hammer and nail. The nail is at a point and the point refine the impact to a singular point and thus creates more force. You ever see the should bouce as much when the shile drops on it's almost flattened side? No. It bounces a little, but because the force is spread, it distribues outward rather than back inward. I am rather bad at explaining so I hope I explained right.
Scott Sommer I think is trying to say that due to the outer edge of the shield being significantly smaller than the front of the shield it would bounce less and work more like a hammer hitting the ground. What you’re assuming is that there’s no second impact (albeit small) in falls like that, either way it’s why the front of the shield absorbs impacts as it does. The rings compress on one another on a very small scale and absorb the shock of consistent force dispersing it around the shield in a shock wave type manner/widening the force of the impact and especially in terms of beam weapons would disperse the energy to widen the blast so it’s more like a strong wind going by (for one close to the size of the shield’s large frontal surface area). Of course it has been shown to break inside Marvel Comics, but it’s from EXTREME amounts of force that overcome the shields elasticity.
Same thing for when Ag Carter shoots at him and the bullets simply hit the shield and drop... no bounce occurs... there are other scenes that has the same properties.. it only changes when its been thrown... I would say "magic" or an outer ring made of diff metal..
What about all those god blast impact the shield could block? The only explanation is magic. When the writers made up the throw attack, they completely forgot the shield wasn't able to do it at all (no matter how hard Capt might throw it, as soon as it touches the target, all energy would be gone and shield drops. The target would receive no impact what so ever).
If it was just the shield hitting the ground it would probably bounce but something to consider is that PEOPLE don't bounce and so landing on top of the shield would transfer the kinetic energy to your body and you'd still hit the ground like like normal
Here's my theory: there are straps on the inside. The cross section of the shield perpendicular to the straps are rigid for the cutting effect. The side parallel to the straps, the rings collapses into each other upon impact ever so slightly creating a bounce back effect. It's why some times that shield seems to flex and other times it's rigid. It all depends on which side of the shield impacts first. Cap learned this in WW2. Falcon is too stupid to learn this.
Goddamn, i love your show, please never stop doing it, you have so much talent for science and being behind a camera its honestly inspiring, do you ever do a AMA regarding how the show is produced? cuz big props to your crew for making it so smooth
Vibranium doesn't absorb energy, it reflects nearly all energy expended against it. In an episode of Spider-Man and his amazing friends, Colossus punches a vibranium wall and knocks himself out. This completely explains how Caps shield works.
it absorbs it then returns it, specifically said "absorbs sound waves, and other vibrations and kinetic energy" then returns it, and it makes it the vibration stronger.
There is on more thing to consider, and that is the material that the thing bounces OFF of since some energy always has to end up there. Now, if it's a sturdy wall that's probably negligible, but the 'physics' behind the shield actually start not make sense anymore when bouncing off of people. When that happens not only do you definitely deposit energy in the body by deformation, but also by transferring kinetic energy which ends in that person flying through the air. Since the shield apparently never loses it's kinetic energy though, energy conservation is probably violated (or conversation of momentum, alternatively, though in a situation like this they're basically the same thing if you don't want to consider how the shield deposits energy in the form of heat and/or deformation in the person it's hitting.)
Wow... that is a surprisingly intellectual insight... I've given some thought to the subject since watching Civil War, and the only solution to the conservation of energy problem I can come with is that the shield hits the rebounding surface so hard that it causes the surface atoms to fuse, releasing energy. But that's just my opinion, and I apologize if it offends anyone.
I was just about to put a post on the same subject! Another thing that I find physics breaking about his shield is that bullets don't ricochet off it it. They just drop (visual evidence is in Captain America 1 where he gets the shield for the first time). In that situation, should the elastic metal property apply to the bullets as well? They should have lost a lot of their kinetic potential to the shield, but they definitely should also have ricocheted off of it at a much greater velocity than just falling straight to the ground. For some reason the shield absorbed all of the energy from the bullet, didn't return any energy to the bullet, and didn't let any of the energy pass through the shield and into Cap's arm. By all means if the shield works the way that Kyle explained it, then even if it was designed to mostly bounce along it's sides, frontal attacks would still have some elasticity and cause forces to act and deal with the transfer of energy.
Huh... never thought of that before... although, if the bullets ricocheted with higher ricochet velocity than incoming velocity, wouldn't that violate conservation of energy?
Hedshodd - the one thing mentioned but not explicitly understood in Kyle's explanation is the part with edge vs face surface. While, yes, the movies do seem to contradict themselves a bit by bullets ricochetting sometimes and falling flat other times, the idea is HOW, WHEN and WHERE the elastic energy is expressed. The vibranium is fused in with the other metals, not simply laying on it in rings, so my belief has always been that any force/energy towards the shield is temporarily absorbed towards the center point. When released back, people think about it as full angular reflection, but I theorize that it mostly radiates outward from center to the shield edges. So, a lower caliber shot (let's say moving at 200mph or lower) hits the face of the shield, and the kinetic energy of that small thing loses 99% overall of its speed after it transfers into the shield and little reflects back to it. Elasticity action of the shield along vibranium molecule channels bunches it towards the center from almost any angle it is hit, but then radiates most of it back towards the shield's circumference. Essentially most of that bullet's energy transfers out the edges of the shield, and the bullet gets so little back that it barely bounces back. This looks, on the macro level, like the bullet just drops straight down. With a higher caliber bullet (let's say 700mph+) the same concept applies, but at some velocity the shield's elasticity at the contact point reaches a limit. I will call this limit 500mph at a 6mm sq contact point. The math of this is overly simplified, but from 1-500mph at the small contact point, anything loses 99% of its motion by way of kinetic energy transferring in, absorbed towards the center, then radiated out the edges of the shield (to our naked eyes we do not see the air pushed radially out the edges as that kinetic energy reflects out distributed all around it). The remaining 200mph+ of energy experiences significantly less loss, but still some, as vibratory waves crisscross each other for a split second. This amount acts more like standard reflection, and we see this high caliber bullet bounce back. To our naked eye that couldn't track the bullet to start with, we do not realize how much slower the bullet reflects in the opposite direction, but the behavior is now akin to a low caliber shot (like the previous paragraph's example). Now, a previous comment mentioned him dropping from a height onto the ground, on top the shield, but this too is treated similarly. Because it is a curved surface, some of the flat ground isn't contacted, and depending on the height of the fall with gravitational acceleration, he is no where near terminal velocity, i.e. he also isn't past the 500mph:6mm sq tolerance point. Further, more than 6mm is being contacted despite curvature, so even at 12mm sq we already have nearly 1000mph of comparable motion/kinetic force being subject to the -99% treatment. This all means that since the ground isn't going to bounce away like a bullet would, up to 1% of the force that can't properly radiate out the front may radiate out the back into Steve. Also, he doesn't bounce back because the 1% force is not enough to push his mass back up significantly. This, from a short fall, equates to a light tap, and this is on a super soldier, so it is far from dangerous to him. So, in summary, directed momentum mostly radiates out the sides due to elastic channelling to the center then out to the edges at some max tolerance transfer speed (due to vibranium behavior while fused with the unique portions of the metals it is) and turns low caliber into near-stop motion, high caliber into low caliber, and falls into taps. Hope this makes sense as the reasons the movies seem to contradict themselves but aren't truly totally doing so. [EDIT - I must add that with edge impacts at certain angles, the fusion pattern reflects nearly all the directional force back, causing the standard bouncy shield behavior. Certain special angles cause vibrational behavior of all the shield's molecules for the reflection to all radiate out, or be channelled along a point. At those special exact angles, the shield acts nearly the same off a solid wall as it would off a person. At other angles, the shield would probably slice into a person's flesh easier, and at all other angles the energy is distributed all around/mostly out all the edges, so it and other objects essentially come to a halt].
But the real question is why did Howard Stark built a shield and not an armour for cap? 🤔 This is what happened- Howard:" Hey cap we are going to make an armour for you.. (18 hrs later at the facility)- Howard:" Alright gentlemen lets- unknown guy: " Im sorry sir but I think that after giving the supersoldier serum to cap it would be worthless to spend billions on building an armour.. why not just give him a shield that is made up of a steel,vibranium and carbon fibre composite material with a coefficient of restitution close to 1?! Howard: "good thinking ! thanks for the suggestion!" Unknown guy:" Thats my pleasure." Howard stark:" But I must say you have a pretty weird beard!"
@majormoron nevermind the entire flash, if you were able to accelerate a single playing card to the speed of light, disregarding air friction of course and the fact that the card would disintegrate instantaneously, the impact of said card would yield more power than the Tsar Bomba explosion, the most powerful nuclear detonation ever. The card's impact would yield roughly 61 megatons, whereas the tsar bomba yielded 50. And a card weighs only 1.6 grams. If the flash were to be able to travel at light speed, assuming he weighs in at 80kgs, his steps would generate enough energy to wipe out life on earth in its entirety.
Elasticity does not explain how the return force is uni-directional, such as when Thor strikes the shield and is blasted backwards along with the surrounding forest, nor does it explain why the shield can seemingly absorb INFINITE amounts of kinetic energy, such as the iconic scene in Civil War with Iron Man firing his repulsors right at the shield. In addition, if we're talking about elastic transfer, then scenes such as Captain America dropping several stories onto the shield should bounce him back up into the air like a trampoline. Then take into account the sharpness of the edge. At similar visible velocities, the shield can either knock out a human being or embed itself in solid reinforced concrete, or even sheer through various metal armors. Really, this video should have covered the shield being apparently sentient and telepathically linked to its wielder, able to choose the level of harm inflicted at a moment's notice.
Maybe the face of the shield or y plain was specifically made to disperse on coming energy while the inside of the shield on the x plain was made to redirect energy? because you never see the face of cap's shield redirect energy like the edges do.
@ Cole Guidry You mean like in Avengers when Iron Man fires his repulsor beams directly at Cap's shield and he uses it to reflect the beam and cut a swath through the Chitauri? Also, if you re-watch The First Avenger and see the unpainted shield, it looks more like it's made of semi-laminated, concentric rings. While this MIGHT explain its ability to bounce due to contraction and expansion on opposite sides of the rings, it does NOT explain how the same angle and strength of a throw can both knock unconscious a guard and then embed itself into reinforced concrete or steel blast doors.
Well, and coming from a complete Marvel nerd/fanboy, maybe it doesn't follow any laws of physics, hence the quote from ye olde Web-Head in Civil War: "That thing doesn't follow the laws of physics at all!" And Cap responding with "Kid, there's a lot going on that you don't understand." *Obviously* referring to his shield.
The shield bounces because they wrote it that way. Nice job on the COR physics though. One part of this situation that always annoyed me though is that the extreme durability of his shield also should be deforming the materials he is hitting with it. There should be lots of dents in the materials he is hitting with it and if it hits a material that is too soft, the shield should stick.
Nerdist wow didn't expect such a response from such a lame joke :p but in all seriousness all of us at Nonchalant gamers, we all love your because science videos, you've done it in such a way pretty much anyone can follow. And we're thankful for it so... On behalf of everyone... Thank you :3
I believe in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe it mentioned that Cap's shield had depleted uranium inserts in sections in it. Does this also fall into your equation or does it disrupt it?
You gotta check these out: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America's_shield#Ricochet_ballistics ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QpiGPLUCC3w.html
Your forgetting one crucial thing. The shield is magnetic. Its shown in 'Age of Ultron' that it's magnetic and that Cap has a device to bring it back to him, so it probably doesn't matter what energy goes where as long as the shield doesn't reach that point of deformity. He just use his force pull (Tony Stark invented SUPER MAGNET) to bring it back to himself or help it on its way. Plus caps new shield referenced in Spider-man Homecoming is probably chocablock full of gadgets as well.
KYLE I'VE GOT AN AMAZING QUESTION WHICH BOTHERS ME EVERY NIGHT MAKING ME SWEAT IN MY SLEEP PLEASE HELP: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SLASH A SWORD AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT?
So, you don't actually need to violate physics to see what would happen. Just any significant relativistic speed, would demonstrate. At those speeds, air molecules, which move on the order of 1000 m/s, would not be able to get out of the way fast enough, so they would be compressed and begin to heat up. This is what happens with objects such as the space shuttle as it reenters the atmosphere. The relativistic speeds give us necessary energy for the air to start to fuse, making each swing of that sword a similar to a hydrogen bomb.
It probably depends on the angle he throws it. If he throws it as hard as he can in a straight line then he'll probably throw it through/into a wall for the simple fact that the wall can't take it and the surface area of the shield at high speed with high power will act like a sword (or in this case an arrow). But if he throws it at an angle then no matter how hard he throws it the shield will bounce off because of lack of friction, the roundness of the shield and other things like that.
probably the angle as alexthe great said before. if the sheild is thrown perpendicularly to the entire sheild it could bounce but if the sheild is thrown perpendicularly with its sheild edge it could possibly embeed itself. OR because comic/fiction physics/magic
I understand that cap is not as smart as Tony or Bruce but you always see him moving once he threw the shield so he just moves to the place the shield comes back
Actually, we do see bullets ricochet after hitting the shield in Winter Soldier during the "highway fight". Right as Cap runs out of the toppled bus, he's being shot at by a guy with a machine gun (and a couple other guys with different guns). He runs toward them with his shield up, thus preventing himself from getting shot, but he also angles the shield as he runs to redirect the machine-gun bullets back to the gunmen, who we see fall over as a result. That said, we do also see bullets just fall from the shield in First Avenger when Peggy fires at it.
The shield seems to violate thermodynamics frequently, as it appears to bounce off of multiple objects in certain scenes and impart energy *to* them (e.g. knocking guys around, smashing objects) without losing any obvious speed. Now I recognize that if it gets deflected, then the momentum can in principle be accounted for (i.e. it knocks an object backwards and then bounces off, giving its forward momentum to that object while now having a backward momentum from the reaction force it experienced upon impact). Those situations I'm okay with, since we are assuming that the shield is elastic enough to bounce back with almost a perfect return of energy. However, can we say the same for an object that ricochets around the room and imparts force such that objects are knocked around FAR more than the shield's deflection would suggest? This seems as though the shield is effectively "giving" more energy than it is receiving (unless we assume that the shield is ridiculously massive, which doesn't make sense for a lot of reasons). I dunno. Maybe I'm overthinking this. Or maybe I'm leaving out something simple because I haven't had enough coffee today. Anyone got thoughts?
In the comics Stark enhanced Cap's shield with an electro-magnetic manipulator thing to allow Cap to control where his shield goes. Also, in The First Avenger, when Peggy shot at Steve the bullets just dropped to the ground. They didn't ricochet.
Hey what if I say that I have an object thant is pretty like disk shaped and bounces 🔙 just like shield of Captain America. Well its disk shaped and cant dodge bullets but its edges are metallic which makes it bounce. And if practiced perfectly it comes back to u. Soon the video will be coming :)😉😎
Where does a person bring up new questions in this channel? I wanted to ask Kyle about Hypercubes and how time would be dispersed among a tesseract that was 60mx60mx60mx60s! or a 4th spacial dimension?! or a cube much bigger or smaller. How far would you have to travel to encounter yourself again like they do in Cube 2! Maybe 60KMX60KMX60KMX60KS!
@5:50 "VIBRANIUM LACED RINGS ...ah you did your research. I remember when they showed the incomplete shield in an Ironman movie and you could see the rings going around it. That's some nice attention to physics on the director's part ! @Nerdist.
Kyle Hill FTW, great break down as always... all I'm thinking about is how much Cap is "catching" that shield after throwing. Sorry Mr.America, no handshakes for you...
Please like here so that Kyle can see a question I asked him on Twitter a while ago: How can an average adult weighted object (tiny Ant-man) ride an ant???
*breathes in* NNNNEEERRRDDDDD!!!! :D Love this so much. So how about exploring the world of skies of arcadia? How do ships float in the sky? Would someone that fell off a ship swim or just plummet to their death?
I run RPGs and I had an issue with ability of Cap's shield being able to bounce because of the description of it's property of absorbing all kinetic energy is supposed to be absolute. It was simply Comic Book "science" but they are in as different reality, so it may not have the same physics as we do. In the comics it does have another property - It absorbs sound waves, vibrations, and kinetic energy all of it makes the metal stronger. With my issue of Cap's shield, I felt that I had to create a similar metal that did have the properties of complete absorption. It transformed all of the energy into heat, which bled off slowly, as so to not burn the user. I added components to the shield itself to allow it to work with our physics, at least as reasonably close as I can get. I'm not a physicist. But my engineering and physicist friends who played in my game found it to be a good idea. We would just need to find the based metal element to create it.
1. So, that's why Vision bounced like that when pushing Giant-Man in Civil War? 2. Would that also mean that Black Panther should bounce off anything when coming with enough speed?
@Kyle_Hill Would Two lightsabers be able to clash? Since you've theorized that it's only plasma with an electro magnetic field, would the magnetic field just bounce off eachother or would the plasma just phase through eachother? How do two lightsabers make contact?
Nerdist Nerdist hey I've been trying to get some answers for as long as I can remember........(wolverine joke) How do I maintain my mutton chops so neatly. If I have such a great healing factor. After all, hair follicles are dead skin cells. My mutation is to regenerate dead tissue down to the cellular level. Wouldn't it be plossable that I would have a baby face with absolutely no facial hair? I need to know, Bub! Ol' chuck keeps plenty of mystery from me in that shiney 8 ball of a dome of his. I've searched all over the great white North for this answer
So, does this mean that any solid projectile striking Capt.'s shield will be "thrown" off of it at a greater velocity than if his shield were made of other materials with a lower coefficient of restitution? - With this question, depending on the solve, Capt. potentially could bounce bullets (lead, copper, steal, etc.) back at aggressors or cause more harm by throwing the hot metal randomly at the various odd angles his shield is struck. For this projected hypothesis to occur I would imagine the vibranium shield to have to remain taught/static, as pictured when Capt. America defends from oncoming fire by covering himself 'firmly' with said shield.
Youre fucking awesome!!!! Period!!!!!! You always put out amazing content and make learning fun!!!! You would make a hellva teacher using pop culture to show kids math is just amazing!!!! Bill nye aint teaching kids that it is theoretically possible which makes the impossible that much more possible with some math science!!!!
The shield isn't made of Vibranium. It's made of True Adamantium. It's made from Vibranium, Adamantium & another unknow substance stronger than either one so that probably explains why it doesn't deform.
I've always figured that the bigger question is more how does he move the shield? Given the ludicrously powerful crap he blocks with the shield, thanks to it's energy stopping properties, without seeming to suffer any significant strain himself, you would have to believe that the shield really does absorb all the energy. But wait! If the shield can stop, say, Thor's hammer without Captain America being affected, how is it that the much smaller force that is used to carry and move the shield by the Captain isn't absorbed? I know the real answer is magic but I think it's worth noting just how full of contradiction vibranium crap in Marvel is.
