Everyone agrees that Batman is cool because he's just a normal guy but also a superhero. He doesn't have a special ability. He doesn't have a lot of skills or equipment.

The Batman uses his ascender gun in the movie The Batman. The grapple gun is also known as a grappling gun. It's used by Batman to launch a grappling hook, which is connected to a cable. An electric motor within the gun pulls Batman up.

Batman is in a building with a bunch of police officers who have taken him into custody. He doesn't believe that is a good idea. He runs to an interior stairwell and shoots the ascender cable up near the stairwell's top, then uses the motor to pull him up. He gets away. You know that.

What kind of battery or power source would his ascender need, and how much power would it consume? There is a little background on energy.

There is energy for the ascent.

The collection of objects we want to study is one of the things we want to understand about energy. It's not very practical to deal with the whole thing at the same time. We want to focus on the objects that are important to us.

Batman, the ascender, and the Earth are included in the system. You may think the Earth is odd to add to the system. We will make it.

One of the most important principles in physics is the work-energy principle. The work done on a system is equivalent to the change in the system's energy. What is energy?

There is a hard question, but my best answer is that energy is a way to keep track of different interactions. Different forms of energy can be found. There are two types of potential energy: one that depends on the position of objects and the other that depends on the motion of objects.

Work is adding or taking away energy from a system. Work is defined in terms of forces.

The illustration is by Allain.

The applied force is F and the distance between it and the object is r. The component of the force in the direction of the displacement is what matters.

Batman's use of an ascender is a perfect example of the work-energy principle. As Batman zooms up to the top floor of the building, let's take a look at the work and changes in energy. Define our system of interest is the first thing that needs to be done. We can figure out which interactions are work and which areenergies by defining the system.

I'm going to use a force diagram to show Batman climbing the cable. Since the Earth is large, I'm just going to show Batman.

The illustration is by Allain.

There are two forces that act on Batman, one of which is the tension in the cable. The two forces pull on Batman but they don't work on the system. Batman and the ascender move instead of the tension in the cable. The work is zero since the cable doesn't move.

We will not consider the work done by the force. Batman and the Earth interact with forces. We can't consider work done by this internal force since the Earth is part of our system. We will use a potential energy instead of using this force. Potential energy can be seen as energy stored in a system This is called "gravitational potential energy." This looks like it.

The illustration is by Allain.

The mass of the object is m, the gravity is g, and the vertical position is y. Since it's just the change in Batman's position that matters, you can measure the position from any reference point you want.

We have a problem right now. The work-energy equation looks similar to this.

The illustration is by Allain.

The work is zero if Batman is moving up at a constant speed.

The change in energy will be positive since he is moving up. The left side of the equation is zero and the right side is negative. To see that something is missing, you don't have to be a mathematical person.

The battery has chemical potential energy. As the potential energy increases, the battery energy decreases. We have an equation like this.

The illustration is by Allain.

A bat-ascender needs a lot of energy. You just have to know the mass of Batman, the field of gravity, and the height of the character.

Let's come up with some numbers. I don't know what the mass of Batman's suit is, so I'm just going with 100 grams. It's difficult to see, but it's more than five floors and less than 15. Say 10 floors. The change in height was put at 43 meters since the story is about 4.3 meters. The reduction in battery energy would be 42,000 joules.

What does that really mean? The basic unit of energy is called a joule. They may name something after you if you do cool stuff. It would take about 10 joules of energy to put a physics textbook on a table.

How big is the battery for this escape? Depending on the battery you use. The phone's battery has a capacity of 3,227 hours. You can convert the energy capacity tojoules if you know the battery voltage. Well, guess what? 43,000 joules is the amount of energy in the battery of an Apple device. Batman might have a little extra left over so he can post his amazing feat on his TikTok channel.

He could use AA batteries. The best AA batteries have an energy of around 10,000 joules. He would only need a few batteries to get to the top.

It is surprising because there is more to this calculation.

There is an estimation of power.

The energy needed to get Batman to the top of the stairwell is not taken into account. How long this move takes is one of the factors we have to consider. The power is a quantity that describes how quickly the energy of a system changes.

The illustration is by Allain.

The power in units of watt will be given if the change in energy is in joules and the change in time is in seconds. The change in energy is 42,000 joules, so I need to find the time it takes for Batman to travel the 10 floors in the video.

The timing is not clear because the film cuts between shots and camera angles. It took him 6 seconds from the ground floor to the top. The power needed from the battery is 7,164 watt.

There is a lot of power. I suppose that's true. If you wanted to compare this to the energy needed to power a car, you would have to convert it to the power of a car. The majority of cars have a 150-hp engine.

This is a good thing for someone. The data from NASA shows that a human in top shape can produce up to 1000 watt of power in 6 seconds. It's not 7,000 watt. Even if that person is the Batman, that won't happen.

The ascender has a problem with its battery. It wouldn't be enough to power the ascender for a 10-storey climb with an Apple battery. You have a battery with a power output of 7,000 watt An electric current of over 1800 amperes is required. It's a high current. It's so high that the wires going to the motor would need more power.

A normal battery is not able to do this. If you wanted to reduce the current, you would need a bigger battery. Bigger batteries are more heavy. That means you need a bigger ascender.

Electric-powered ascenders are possible, and it looks like they work. It would take something like this to pull a person up a stairwell. This version is larger and slower than the one shown in the movie. The hacksmith ascender gun uses batteries small enough to fit in two pants pockets, but they also have electric motors that are larger than Batman's gun.

Batman wants his gun to be small and hidden. No one knows what he can or can't do The Batman needs to use special effects. It makes for a great physics problem because of that.