Spider-Man Superpowers IRL | Impossible Science at Home

On a planet they call Earth lives a species called humans. Little do these humans realize that inside of them they possess remarkable powers. Powers similar to their favorite superheroes like Spider-Man. Want to embrace your superhuman abilities like Spider-Man? Welcome to Impossible Science. Now everyone at one point in their life has dreamt about being a superhero and saving the day with their superhuman strengths like Spider-Man. His ability to have quick reflexes, spider strength, or even spidey sense, or climb a wall like I just did. That was just an illusion Jason. Okay that was just an illusion but today I'm going to show you three experiments that you can do to impress your friends with your Spider-Man abilities. Let's get started. Superhuman speed and reflexes. Now we are talking about Spider-Man's reflexes, his speed, or his reaction time. It's all superhuman. Now his reflexes are supposed to be 15 times faster than the normal human. Now but what's the difference between reflexes and reaction time? Well let me show you. Leslie can I use you for a demonstration? Sure. All right. So we're going to strike this tendon right here on your knee. Now a reflex is an involuntary automatic movement and by striking this little tendon here I can actually get your leg to kick on its own. Three. I love it. Every single time. Where a reaction time is a voluntary movement. But I can show you an experiment that brings it all together from speed, reaction, and reflexes. I want to see if you guys can catch this spider but I'm going to ask you to put your hand, place your hand over here Leslie, just on top like this right. I'm going to put about one hand distance away from you. I'm going to place my hand two hand distances away from you. I'm going to try to grab that spider. All you have to do is drop your hand and catch the spider. I'm going to try to grab it before you do. Okay? Okay. All right. Are you ready? Yes. Michelle you try. You try. Okay. All right. So one hand distance. My hand is twice the distance away and I'm still going to try to catch that spider. Ready? Almost got the paper too. Pretty cool right? That's insane. All right let's go into the science of it. You think you have the advantage because you're only one hand away. But the real secret to this is I get to determine the start time by moving my hands. See you're actually reacting to my movement and that actually gives me the advantage. So I'm actually testing your reflex time and your reaction time versus my speed which is why I have the advantage. Make sense? Yeah. Spidey sense. Now spidey sense is probably one of the most popular or most famous superhero powers of spider-man. But we more commonly think of it as intuition. See spidey sense being this psychological awareness of danger about to happen before it happens. But for intuition for ourselves like have you ever experienced something without any evidence? You have this ability to know about what's going to happen before it happens. Have you ever had that? How do you experience intuition? For me it's like a tingling feeling on my arm or the back of my neck. Jordana how about yourself? How do you experience intuition? For me it's a gut feeling. It's a gut feeling. It's like butterflies. Yeah me too. A lot of people actually use their gut feeling to make decisions based on their intuition. Now the funny thing is we don't really understand intuition. No one's actually proven how it works or why it works. But there is an intuition challenge that you can do with your friends that's a lot of fun. And it has to do with closing your eyes and trying to clap with a group all at the same time. Now the more people there are the harder it is. But we should give it a shot. So here here close it close your laptops. All right close your eyes. Ready? That's a pretty good trick. Superhuman strength. Now we've gone over spider-man superhuman reflexes, reaction time, speed, and even spidey sense. But I'm going to show you an illusion that gives you superhuman strength. Now not all of us have spider-man's ability to lift 10 tons. But with a little bit of science I can show you how to rip an apple in half just with your bare hands. And it has to do with your technique of how you hold the apple. Most people when they hold an apple they don't have the grip to be able to pull it apart. But if you use the pad of your thumbs at the top of the apple like this you can have a better grip using the pads of your thumbs to pull it apart. Grab from the top press in with your thumbs and pull apart. Now that's pretty impressive that you can rip an apple in half. But what if I told you you can actually cut an apple in half with only one finger? Now I'm going to be using honeycrisp apples because these seem to be the easiest to do it with. But you can do this with any apple. Your hands are so much stronger than you think they are. And to do this all you need to do is just place your finger across the top of the apple. You want your knuckle to be over the center of the apple. I'm going to do it on the edge of the table because I'm going to hit my finger like this and I really don't want my hand to just get pushed into the table. So I'm going to do it off the edge. So all I have to do is hit like this. Ready? One, two, three. Split the apple in half. Well there you have it. You're more like Spider-Man than you may have thought. And never underestimate your superpowers as a human. If you try these out with your friends let us know in the comments below. And remember, stay curious because... Hey, hey, that's my line. Oops, sorry Jason. Remember, because the right question changes everything.