Book Review: The Physics of the Buffyverse by Jennifer Ouellette

I am not a physicist. In fact, even though I always liked the sciences in school, even though I always read science fiction (and stuck my nose up a bit at fantasy), even though one of the childhood TV experiences that I get nostalgic about is TVO's Eureka - in spite of all those things, I actively avoided any kind of physics education. Physics was too much like math. And not the good math, not the kind of math with definitive right answers for which you can pat yourself on the back. (I liked that math.) Physics was like that grade 11 math course wherein I spent a whole year wondering if this was what it was like to have a psychotic break, because clearly the teacher was speaking in tongues. Physics intimidated me and so I did my best I ignore it.

And, as much as I am not a physicist, I am a Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and Angel) fan. In fact, those two things are among the key descriptors when I think about myself. Who is Bonnie? She is someone who thinks the Buffyverse is an incredible creation worth your attention whereas physics is something that will apply to you without needing any involvement or detailed understanding on your part.  Except that they've apparently snuck physics lessons into my beloved television.

That's what Jennifer Ouellette is out to prove with her book, The Physics of the Buffyverse. In the tradition of The Physics of Star Trek (on my shelf, gathering dust), Ouellette uses the events on the Hellmouth and in Angel's L.A. to examine basic and cutting-edge ideas in physics. For instance, Illyria's forceful eviction of Angel from Wolfram & Hart, is used to help illustrate electromagnetism:

Even after building up all that momentum during his fall, electromagnetism still easily trumps gravity once Angel makes contract with the pavement. The repulsive electrical force between the atoms in the pavement and the atoms in his body stops him cold. It is electromagnetism that provides the resistance. No particle in Angel's body ever makes contact, on an atomic scale, with any particle in the pavement.

Physics lesson one: atoms don't like intermingling. Okay, I get that. Atoms don't scare me; I liked chemistry. That was pretty painless (except maybe for David Boreanaz's stuntman). In the early section of the book, many of the examples trotted out are like this one: Buffy, Xander, Anya, Cordelia, Lorne and others are used to illustrate the most basic principles of physics, the same subject matter covered by those early '80s Eureka cartoons. In particular, Ouellette examines the physics of fighting, looking at things like mass, inertia, energy, gravity and more.

As the book goes on, Ouellette delves deeper into both the science and the Buffyverse. More complicated and theoretical science is discussed, from Schrödinger's cat (using Miss Kitty Fantastico, of course) to black holes to that Buffyverse perennial, portals and interdimensional travel. Ouellette illustrates quantum phenomenon using the Vegas-imprisoned Lorne as an example:

 

[I]n a quantum world, Lorne merely has the highest likelihood of being found somewhere in his dressing room. There is the tiniest probability of finding Lorne on the street just outside the casino. If he waits long enough, eventually he can escape his captors with no effort at all, thereby violating the laws of classical physics, not to mention common sense. Of course, he would have to wait longer than the entire lifetime of our universe before this occurred, but the probability is definitely there.

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Article Author: Bonnie

Bonnie writes about books every Thursday at Fourth-Rate Reader, about everything else at Signifying Nothing, and sometimes she resorts to pictures. She lives in Toronto.

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