Everyone has the same comment about Batman – he’s cool because he’s just a regular guy, but he’s also a superhero. That’s right, he doesn’t have superpowers. However, what he does have is a combination of skills and equipment.
in the movie The Batman, we see him use one of his “toys”: his Ascending Gun. (Also known as a grappling gun or grappling gun.) Batman uses it to throw something like a grappling hook, which is attached to a wire. Once attached to a high point, an electric motor inside the gun coils the cable, pulling Batman upwards.
In this scene, Batman is in a building with a group of Gotham police officers who have arrested him. He doesn’t think that’s such a good idea. After breaking free, run to an indoor ladder and shoot the ascending cable near the top of the ladder, then activate the engine to pull it up. Spoiler: He escapes. (But you probably knew that.)
Now for the physical calculations: what kind of battery or power supply would your ascender need and how much power would it use? Let’s start with some background on energy.
Energy for the ascent
One of the key ideas for understanding energy is to define a system of interest, which is the collection of objects we want to study. (Of course, the most complete system is the entire universe, but it’s not very practical to deal with everything at once. Instead, we want to isolate only the objects we’re interested in.)
We use the following system: Batman plus the elevator (and his battery) and Earth. (You might think Earth is an odd thing to add to the system, but just wait. We’ll get there.)
Once we have a system, we can use one of the most important concepts in physics: the work-energy principle. This says that the work done on a system is equal to the change in the energy of the system. But what the hell is energy?
It’s actually a tough question, but here’s my best answer: Energy isn’t a real thing, but a way to keep track of different interactions. Energy also comes in different forms. For example, kinetic energy is associated with the movement of objects, and potential energy is that which depends on the position of objects.
Therefore, work is a way of adding or removing energy from a system. In terms of forces, we define work as follows:
Illustration: Rhett Allain