Related Articles
Although Spider-Man started as a comic book character, he has made his way to live-action video several times. I remember seeing him appear on The Electric Company in the 1970s for a short skit; it was cool but a little odd. In the modern era of live-action Spider-Man movies, we had the Tobey Maguire version, followed by Andrew Garfield’s turn, and finally the Tom Holland version that appears in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe. We got a chance to see all three in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which was great, plus a good excuse to answer the question of whether MJ could really hang on during one of Spidey’s swings.
But now it is time to ask an even tougher question: Which version of Spider-Man is the strongest? Let's compare the Maguire version in 2004’s Spider-Man 2 to the Holland version in 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming, since they perform similar actions: a test of strength that involves using Spidey’s webs to restrain a moving vehicle. Maguire’s Spider-Man stops a runaway subway train, and Holland’s uses webs to hold a splitting ferry together. (It would have been great to include Garfield’s version in this comparison, but there’s just not a scene that shows a similar feat of strength.)
Stopping a Subway Train
Here's the situation in Maguire’s Spider-Man 2, which you can watch in this clip: After a battle with a bad guy, Spider-Man finds himself at the front of an out-of-control subway train. There are a bunch of people on the train, so he needs to save them. He attempts to slow the train by jamming his feet down onto the track, but that doesn't work. So he shoots some webs at the buildings on both sides of the track and holds on. The webs stretch and—spoiler alert—the plan works. Spidey stops the train.
If we estimate the force required to stop this train, that will also be an estimate of Maguire's strength.
Let's start with some physics concepts. Suppose I have an object with a mass (m) moving with a velocity (v). If you apply a force to this object, it will experience an acceleration based on Newton's second law, which states that the net force is equal to the product of its mass and acceleration (Fnet = m × a). In this case, that object is a train, and the force is the backwards-pushing force from Spider-Man's webs, which he is holding onto.
If I estimate the mass of the train and find the acceleration, I can calculate that force. We define acceleration as the rate of change of velocity. As an equation, it looks like this:
Most PopularGearPS5 vs PS5 Slim: What’s the Difference, and Which One Should You Get?By Eric RavenscraftGear13 Great Couches You Can Order OnlineBy Louryn StrampeGearThe Best Portable Power StationsBy Simon HillGearThe Best Wireless Earbuds for Working OutBy Adrienne So
For this train, the final velocity (v2) would be zero, since it stops. That means I will need both the initial velocity (v1) and the stopping time from when Spider-Man shoots the webs until it actually stops (Δt). The time is pretty easy, because I can get that from the video—it takes 36 seconds.
What about the initial speed? OK, we are going to need to do a little work here. In the scene, we see a nice view of the motion of the train right when Spider-Man shoots his webs onto the buildings. I can drop this clip into Tracker Video Analysis and get position-time data from the location of the train in each frame. (I used a short segment of the train's motion before Spidey's webs grab hold.)
There is one more tiny detail I need to get the correct distance scale, and that is the length of each train car. Although Spider-Man 2 takes place in New York City, this scene was actually filmed in Chicago on the L train, which is short for "elevated." Those train cars have a length of 14.7 meters, exactly the information I need. With that, I get the following data for the position of the train:
Since the velocity is the rate of change of position, the slope of a position-time graph would be the speed. This gives the train a starting velocity of 27 meters per second, or 60 miles per hour. That thing is going pretty fast, but L train cars actually have a top speed of 70 mph. Still, it's a good thing Spidey is there to stop it. Using that value for the initial speed and a time of 36 seconds gives an acceleration of 0.75 meters per second per second.
Most PopularGearPS5 vs PS5 Slim: What’s the Difference, and Which One Should You Get?By Eric RavenscraftGear13 Great Couches You Can Order OnlineBy Louryn StrampeGearThe Best Portable Power StationsBy Simon HillGearThe Best Wireless Earbuds for Working OutBy Adrienne So
Next, I need the mass. Each car has an empty mass of 26,000 kilograms and a capacity of 34 seats, or 123 total passengers. From the clip, the train looks pretty crowded, but not at full capacity. Let's just say there are 60 people per car, and each rider has an average mass of 70 kilograms.
Finally, I need the total number of train cars. We never get a perfect shot, but I'm going to guess there are five cars. That puts the total mass at 151,000 kilograms. Factoring in this mass and the acceleration, we get a stopping force of 113,000 newtons.
That's the total force pulling on the train to slow it down. But remember, there are webs on both sides of the train. Since Spider-Man holds onto webs on both sides, he’s essentially just exerting a force equal to the tension in the web. That means that he’s only exerting a force that’s half the total value of the stopping force.
The same thing happens when you pass a string over a pulley: It allows you to double your pulling force. (Spidey is essentially acting as the wheel in the pulley system.) Spidey’s exerted force would be half of the 113,000 newtons, or 56,500 newtons. If you want to convert that to imperial units, it would be 12,700 pounds. That’s like holding up a male African elephant. You can see my calculations here.
I'm going to put the Tobey Maguire Spidey strength at a value of at least 56,500 newtons. Of course, we don't know if that's his maximum limit, but it's at least a starting value. Also, I have to confess that I might have cheated. I assumed that the force that Spider-Man exerts on the train is constant. That's probably not the case. If spiderwebs are like rubber bands, bungee cords, and most stretchy things, the more you stretch them, the greater the force it takes to hold on to or pull them. But since I don't have any evidence that these webs behave like bungee cords, I'm just going to stick with my constant-force estimation.
Holding a Splitting Ferry Together
Now we can move to Holland’s version in Spider-Man: Homecoming, which you can see in this clip. After an alien weapon goes off and splits the Staten Island Ferry right down the middle, Spider-Man does his best to patch the boat up with his webs to prevent it from sinking. But it slowly starts to separate, with the two halves cracking lengthwise as some of the webs holding them snap apart. In a desperate move, he grabs webs attached to both sides and tries to pull the ferry back together. I’ve drawn a sketch of the important part (not to scale).
Most PopularGearPS5 vs PS5 Slim: What’s the Difference, and Which One Should You Get?By Eric RavenscraftGear13 Great Couches You Can Order OnlineBy Louryn StrampeGearThe Best Portable Power StationsBy Simon HillGearThe Best Wireless Earbuds for Working OutBy Adrienne So
Do you see what we have here? Just like with the stopping of the train, Spider-Man is holding on to webs and likely exerting a large force. It's a perfect comparison. Now we just need to find a value for that force.
This calculation is going to be a bit more challenging from a physics perspective. There are so many factors that we just can’t put a value on. How much of each side of the ferry is filled with water? How many people are onboard? What about the webs that didn’t snap and are still helping hold the boat together?
It's fine. When a physicist gets an unsolvable problem like this, we just turn it into a simpler problem. Yes, it seems like cheating, but at least it will give us a ballpark answer for Spider-Man’s strength.
Here's my simpler problem. A block sits on the edge of a table and is tilted over the side at an angle. A horizontal string is attached to the block, and someone pulls on it to prevent the block from falling over. This is sort of like what’s happening to each half of the splitting boat, with each side tilting away from the center. (I’ve assumed that the bottom of each half of the ferry is still connected to the other half. Otherwise, both parts would just sink straight down instead of tipping over.) The block being on the edge of the table simulates this, because it’s leaning at a similar angle and held up by a string, just as Spider-Man and his webs are the tension holding the two boat halves together. Here is what it looks like:
Notice that there are three forces acting on this tipping block. The first is the force that Spider-Man exerts on the block, which is labeled Fs. Next we have the downward-pulling gravitational force (Fg). Finally, the force from the edge of the table (FT).
Most PopularGearPS5 vs PS5 Slim: What’s the Difference, and Which One Should You Get?By Eric RavenscraftGear13 Great Couches You Can Order OnlineBy Louryn StrampeGearThe Best Portable Power StationsBy Simon HillGearThe Best Wireless Earbuds for Working OutBy Adrienne So
If this block is at rest, then two things must be true. The net force must be equal to zero (so that it doesn't accelerate), and the net torque must be zero (so it doesn't change rotational motion). Just a quick reminder about torque: You can think of this as a "rotational force," or a force that causes changes in rotational motion. The magnitude of a torque (τ) depends on the strength of the force (F), the distance from the force to a pivot point (r), and the angle of the force (θ).
In our tipping block problem, we only need to deal with two torques: the one due to Spider-Man's pull and one from the gravitational force. The force exerted at the pivot point is pushing right at the point, so that it has a distance of r = 0 and zero torque. That means that the other torques must be equal and opposite in order to keep the half of the ferry stationary.
I can use this equation to find the unknown value of the force that Spider-Man exerts. I'm going to need some values—like the mass of half a ferry and the length of the whole thing. Wikipedia does a great job of listing stats that you wouldn't think you would ever actually need, so I know the Staten Island ferry has a mass of 3,335 gross tons (3.38 million kilograms) and a length of 94 meters. I will also need the tilt angle of the boat, which I got by measuring the angle onscreen: 20 degrees.
When I plug in all my values, plus some other estimates, I get a force from Spider-Man equal to 12.7 million newtons, or 2.8 million pounds. Now we can make a comparison: The Tobey Maguire Spider-Man pulls with a force equal to the weight of one elephant, but Tom Holland’s pulls with an equivalent of 219 elephants.
Remember, this value is based on estimations, and some of these estimations are most certainly wrong. It's very possible that the force needed to hold up the ferry could be half my calculated value and the train-stopping force could be twice my value. But even then, we are talking about two elephants compared to 100. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is definitely stronger.
