Deep in the heart of me - the tech of the Iron Man movie

[vitruvian23]

 Going to start posting here again, partly because I've already friended some folks on LJ and partly because of the ease of doing an lj-cut.

Anyway, I've been Googling commentary on the Iron Man movie, specifically the major technological MacGuffin - the arc reactor. And nobody seems to have put as much thought into it as me. Maybe that should tell

Comments

[jmtorres]

Fascinating.

So I have this friend who wants to know why it behaves like a pacemaker, ie, Tony's heart stops when you pull out the arc reactor, if it's really doing the magnet thing on the shrapnel. Any thoughts?

[vitruvian23]

Short answer: No, it does not make any earthly medical sense. I mean, even if there is room for his heart to still be in there, how much of Stark's ribcage around the sternum did Yinsen need to remove to make room for that deep metal tube

[seren_ccd]

Wow. Thank you! Thank you very, very much. Husband and I have been discussing this off and on since the movie and your summary is exactly what I needed. And your explanation above about the 'heart attack' feels really spot on. Thank you for reseaching this.

[anonymous]

I know it is a really old post but I just got a question that has since bugged me after watching the movie for the 12th time. Seeing that you have been able to come up with a theory on how the reactor works, I figured you can come up with an answer:

When Stark decides to change his reactor, we saw how Pepper removes the old reactor along with an electromagnet but replaces with just a new reactor. I am assuming that the new reactor contains a built in electromagnet. What puzzles me is when Stark is forced to use his old reactor, he does it without an electromagnet?

[vitruvian23]

I don't know that we ever see him actually inserting the old one into his chest cavity; in fact, I seem to recall a fade to black immediately after he pulls down the old reactor's 'trophy' case and shatters it. The electromagnet might even have been in there, I don't know if we get a good enough look at the display to tell.

Confusion

[anonymous]

please stop confusion the power output 3 gigajoules is nowhere near 3 gigawatts i am an electrician a joule is a minute amount of power over time hence you dont say joules per second its just joules in terms of watts 3 gigajoules is about 850 kilowatt hours which considering its size is still extremely great but its a far cry from 3 gigawatts

Re: Confusion

[vitruvian23]

Somebody needs to brush up on their SI units. A watt is indeed defined as one joule per second. Certainly, it would be highly unusual for 3 gigajoules of energy to be expended over one second for a power of 3 gigawatts, but if it were to be used that quickly, that would indeed be the power output.

Power output is energy/time, so you can't determine power from energy without knowing what time period you're talking about. Unfortunately, the script for Iron Man confuses the concepts of power and energy, making it difficult to determine what the stats for the arc reactor would actually.

Re: Confusion

[vitruvian23]

The script says "3 gigajoules per second". How would you calculate that power output?

[anonymous]

wow your good