Fun with Gravity

Most of us are accustomed to seeing gravity-defying feats in film and television -- and I'd wager that a high percentage of those reading this blog can relate to Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory when he ranted about the...Most of us are accustomed to seeing gravity-defying feats in film and television -- and I'd wager that a high percentage of those reading this blog can relate to Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory when he ranted about the scientific inaccuracies in the first Superman movie. You know, the one where Lois Lane falls from a great height and Superman catches her right before she hits ground? Sheldon's take is that, under actual Earth-like gravitational conditions, poor Miss Lane would have been sliced into three segments by Superman's of arms of steel. His conclusion: "If he really loved her, he'd let her hit the ground. It would be a more merciful death."Still, who wouldn't love to tweak gravity, just to see what happens? It's not something we can do for real, but video games have become sufficiently sophisticated that new rules of gravity can be applied. Via the Science Punk Blog, I learned (belatedly -- it's a 2007 game) about ...