How Black Panther’s Vibranium Suit Works! | Because Science w/ Kyle Hill

Black Panther comes out this week and gives us another look at vibranium but this time in a suit! But how does it work? Kyle has the Wakandan science on this week's Because Science!

Because Science every Thursday.

Artist: Andrew Bowser

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[becausescience]

Vibranium is still darn confusing, but I think this is a decent approximation of what could be going on. I see a lot of comments about Newton's third, and that's good! REMEMBER, I'm now taking questions and comments from these pages for the new vlog series (and in a future episodes). Comment here and you may be featured! Oh and the movie is a great superhero story, go see it. Thanks for watching! -- KH

[Evocashious]

"Hulk I need you to punch me a few times.." -Black Panther before going nuclear.

[MatterBeamTSF]

In the movie, the Black Panther suit is mentioned to be built of of 'nanites', so molecular-scale springs built out of vibranium is perfectly reasonable.

The springs don't necessarily have to look like the metal coils springs we are used to: they can simply be the potential energy in vibrating atoms.

Vibranium's special property is that it can store these vibrations/compressed springs/stored energy without losing it gradually as heat and deformation.

Oh, and Black Panther, charged up with kinetic energy, could kill a man by touching him.

[gurixd]

Mantis Shrimp really deserves his own movie or netflix series.

[Panthror]

Well, his suit is stored in his necklace and can be brought out by thought, so the vibranium is clearly programmable, in which case you can do just about anything with the stuff. They also have vibranium beads around their wrist, which have loads of different functions varying from EMPs to holo-phones, so like Ultron said: "The most versatile substance on the planet, and they used it to build a Frisbee."

[charleslee]

That's just an explanation of the suit. I want to see you discuss the other technological advancements that Wakanda has! That would make for a fun episode (or two...or nine)

[Gladzet]

You know what? I thought I'd have a problem with this show overall, but I don't. Thank you. You see, I love magic, I don't have a problem with it being unscientific, I like not knowing some things (even if that's silly). You love science and knowing what is what, so I would think you'd destroy magic, but boy I was wrong. Firsty, your childlike fascination with all the things is pretty magical, but secondly and more importantly, you aren't in the business of destroying anything, you're just selling the idea that science is cooler. I gotta say - it's bloody working. Never thought I'd be fascinated by physics but here we are. Thank you, Kyle (and team) ❤

[Jordan_C_Wilde]

The real question is how Tachala deals with the recoil that would occur if he accelerated a two ton car to 10m/s ...

[Joe.Rogan.]

So happy Because Science is its own channel now... I've been torn for so long cause i love Because Science but hate everything else Nerdist does and it wasnt worth getting notifications from a channel that only have one show i watch... what a great day.

[gigaatom]

I guess you really had to use your vi-brain-ium for this one

[janekkindinger]

When you wrote the numbers underneath eachother at 7:10 and did not stay in line with the ones, tens, hundreds and thousands columns, actually triggered me a little bit :) A great video anyways. Thanks a lot, to you and the team.

[horrorhotel]

The only problem I see with the way you are explaining the suit is that those billions of molecular springs should store the energy locally, and thus, you would only be able to release the energy from the exact same spot it impacted the suit. However, we see Black Panther use the energy stored in his suit in a variety of ways, thus creating the necessity for the springs to be able to somehow exchange energy with each other.

I think one can get around that problem and explain Captain America’s shield at the same time by explaining vibranium in terms of the piezoelectric effect, so instead of storing potential elastic energy, we transform it into electric energy, which can ‘easily’ be stored at will:

The Suit can store the electric energy generated by the deformations of the Vibranium in some superconductor-like material and release it back into the Vibranium in a ‘controlled’ way by means of some dermal sensor or EEG-like interface in the helmet.
Captain america’s shield on the other hand has no long term storage capacities, if it is hit, the deformation creates electric energy which flows into the secondary capacitor-layer. The energy is however not stored there, but it ‘immediately’ (so fast that it wouldn’t matter on non-relativistic timescales- which should be possible if the resistance of the material is low enough) flows back into the Vibranium but with an opposite sign (kind of like an LC oscillator circuit) and creates an opposite deformation of the crystal, thus repelling the projectile (at almost the exact same speed, as there are no power losses because of the insanely low resistance- possibly even #superconductors?)

Love the show, you are an excellent science communicator, I could never bring across even half the concepts mentioned in this comment in remotely as pallateable of a fashion as you do on a weekly basis, your videos make me believe in a bright future for education.

[DaReapa]

This is the first and only channel I've ever subscribed to. Keep up the good work Kyle and I really hope your show expands.

[wuhugm]

I just watched the movie, so lemme clear up some things :
1. The suit in Civil War and Black Panther are different, the one with Kinetic Energy Absorption and Distribution is in the latter.
2. The improved suit is made of nanites/nanomachines (said his sister) which in inactive state stored in the necklace. When activated, the nanites envelop the wearer body to form Black Panther suit.
3. The part of the suit that receives damage glows and then the glow is distributed throughout the whole body and the glow gets brighter for every additional damage and it will stay that way until the kinetic energy is released intentionally or until the suit can't hold the the energy anymore and it gets released unintentionally.
From fact number 3 we can conclude that :
- The glow is in fact the nanites, filled with kinetic energy, distributing the energy throughout the suit (the particles are literally moving around).
- Kyle's String Theory is incorrect because the glow is not static. If they were strings, the energy would be concentrated only on the parts hit and it wouldn't be possible to release the stored energy in spherical blast either.
- My theory is that the energy gets unleashed by vibrating the outer layer (the glowing one) of the suit in an extremely high frequency that it creates a powerful shockwave. Vibrating Vibranium... Cool~
I think this video was made before Kyle saw the movie? No way he missed the nanites thing if he had.

[microphonejacket]

LOVE THIS GUY!!! THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS SINGLE CHANNEL!! Nerdist is still cool, BUT THIS IS EVEN BETTER!!!

[mjstory]

I can't wait to see the QA on this one

[jonathanbronico]

The problem of storing the potential energy could be circumvented if the vibranium suit is viewed as a piezoelectric generator instead of a series of spring-like molecular machines.

Much of the same principles from the video could still be applied to this hypothesis. When pressure is applied to a piezoelectric material, an electric current is generated, which could be stored for later use in a battery or capacitor. When T'Challa wishes to release the energy, he passes the stored electricity in the battery through the suit, and the piezoelectric circuit works in reverse, converting the electric current back into physical force, just as explained in the video.

Additionally, piezoelectric materials come in all shapes and varieties from crystals to ceramics to synthetic polymers. Assuming that vibranium falls under this broad spectrum would not be a far-fetched idea.

Also, DARPA has tried using wearable versions of this technology in real life to convert the mechanical energy of marching soldiers into usable electricity. Ultimately, the wearable tech was too uncomfortable to continue with the project, but this is close enough of a real-world counterpart that it's worth mentioning.

[zenhydra]

How would such a suit keep the wearer from turning to paste inside it when releasing kilojoules of energy? A car might be crushed, but the suit (and wearer) will be accelerated in the same destructive manner. Black Panther's suit would be more of an assisted-suicide device than Iron Man's (which is saying something).

[MechabitGames]

What if the suit is made up of piezoelectric generators and stores the energy as electricity? He can then release the electric current back into the piezoelectric crystals and cause them to change shape rapidly on command.

[Vegeta]

How about an episode about how we might be able to make a symbiote suit with SCIENCE? Nano tech, biological, etc. Just a thought, with the Venom movie coming out. :)