- Oh my God, I'm Donald Blake!
I bought this lab coat for a future video,
but I wanted to wear it more than once
to justify my purchase.
Hi, everyone, let's talk about Ant-Man.
If you didn't know, our video theme this month
is superhero science, and we kind of
stretched the definition of superhero
with Han Solo last week,
but we're back on track talking about Marvel's Ant-Man.
And oh boy, Ant-Man, he is a fountain
of things to talk about scientifically.
Many people across the Internet
have already talked in length
about the inconsistencies of his weight,
and density, and all of that stuff.
I'll have links in the description below
if you wanna go read some of that.
But there's one thing that I haven't really seen
many people touch on just yet.
Even if Hank Pym or Scott Lang could shrink down
to the size of the tiny Avenger,
they would probably be effectively blind.
Let me explain.
The light that we can detect with our eyes
is only a tiny slice of the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Light hits Thor's hammer here, some of it's absorbed,
some of it's reflected into my eyes,
and that is how we see.
I mean, obviously sight is a little bit
more complicated than that.
We're not gonna get into the specifics here.
But the average human eye can detect wavelengths
of 390 nanometers to 700 nanometers.
The different wavelengths within that range
also helps determine the color that we see.
That Green Lantern light back there
is around 510 nanometers, for example.
The wavelength of sunlight is a bit tricky,
'cause it consists of many different wavelengths.
But for the sake of simplicity, for this video,
let's say that the average wavelength of sunlight
is 500 nanometers.
The pupil of your eye, that little black hole
that takes in the light,
the diameter can range from about
two millimeters to eight millimeters
in a normal human adult.
Why did I specify human?
Let's go ahead and meet in the middle
and say that the average pupil diameter
is around five millimeters, or five million nanometers.
So when Ant-Man is normal human size,
his pupil is around 10,000 times bigger
than the wavelength of light that we're using,
again, 500 nanometers.
10,000 times bigger, that's plenty of room
for the light to travel.
But, we encounter a problem
whenever Ant-Man shrinks.
Now, both the original Ant-Man, Hank Pym,
and Scott Ling are six feet tall,
and they can shrink to around a half an inch.
Now, obviously we've seen then shrink smaller than that,
but the Marvel website says that this is about
their average shrinking height.
That would mean when they're shrinking,
they reduce their size 144 times.
This also means, of course, that their pupil
is 144 times smaller, going from five million nanometers
to only 3,500 nanometers.
Instead of 10,000 times bigger than
the wavelength of light that we're using,
it's now only 70 times bigger.
And we can make that even worse.
Remember that a pupil diameter normally
can even be as small as two millimeters.
When shrunken down to ant size,
that becomes less than 14,000 nanometers,
or less than 30 times bigger than
the wavelength of light that we're using.
Again, 500 nanometers.
As you can imagine, and as Jame Kakalios points out in
The Physics of Superheroes, this presents
a series of problems for Ant-Man's vision,
but we're only gonna talk about one.
In his analogy, Kakalios draws up the imagery
of a large lake with two docks very far apart.
The space between these docks represents our pupils.
Waves created on the lake can pass through the channel
between the two distant docks with little issue.
Sure, the part of the waves that hit the docks
can bounce back and cause interference,
but the middle of the channel is barely affected by this
since the docks are so far apart.
However, if we keep the waves the same
but bring the docks closer together,
then we start to have a problem.
That interference pattern starts to have
a larger affect.
It screws with the waves and can even cause them
to cancel each other out.
The interference created thanks to Ant-Man's tiny pupils
may cause the Avenger's vision to be blurry and dark.
He'd be unable to properly process the light
that's headed towards his itty bitty eyes.
And if that's the case, could he ever really be
effective in battle?
He'd essentially be blind.
But I know what you're thinking:
Ant-Man wears a helmet.
And that is true some of the time.
I mean, sure, if comic books can create
advanced shrinking technology,
then surely they would allow a helmet with,
I don't know, special lenses that allowed
compensation for the wearer's vision?
But all that is mainly speculation.
The helmet typically is just used for talking to ants.
But even still, the original Ant-Man, Hank Pym,
can grow and shrink at will
thanks to long-term exposure to Pym Particles.
Which is why we've seen him ant sized without any helmet.
And yet, he seems to be fine.
Not only that, he can even shrink other characters
like She-Hulk and Hellcat in this example,
with seemingly no side-effects.
But in reality, there's a reason why human eyes
and the eyes of smaller creatures
like Ant-Man's insect friends
are designed so differently.
Ant eyes are typically less great at
high resolution imagery
and better at detecting large movements.
Ants also rely less on sight than humans do,
instead navigating their world through chemical trails
and vibrations, the sense of touch,
which sounds like a completely different Marvel character.
What if those aren't horns?
What if they're antennae?
You know what, never mind.
If you wanna read more about the science of Ant-Man,
there's a bunch of information in this book.
Once again, The Physics of Superheroes
by James Kakalios.
Probably don't take it verbatim, though.
There's some information that I had to update myself.
But either way, if you wanna check it out,
I'll have a link in the description down below.
Also, I just wanted to say hello
to all of our new subscribers
that came to us from Mr. Sunday Movies.
I apologize for the weirdness that was
the video I did on his channel,
but I'm glad you guys found it charming, I guess.
And just like last week, I wanna remind you guys
that we have a Facebook page
that you should definitely check out.
We are livestreaming there every single week,
every Monday, talking about your comments
and questions from these videos.
So, if you wanna hang out or just keep up to date
on all of the stuff that we're doing,
go to facebook.com/nerdsyncproductions.
Speaking of things on the screen,
here's another video that you might wanna watch.
And if I can ever get videos edited on time,
we will have another one on Saturday.
We're getting a little political, so that's gonna be fun.
My name is Scott, reminding you to read between the panels
and grow smarter through comics.
See ya.