by Conlan Taylor Many aspects of the popular video games Portal and Portal 2 operate on actual scientific principles. One such feature that appears is repulsion gel. This substance, a gel which can propel an individual up to greater heights than he or she started at, possibly acts loosely on the principles of conservation of... Many aspects of the popular video games Portal and Portal 2 operate on actual scientific principles. One such feature that appears is repulsion gel. This substance, a gel which can propel an individual up to greater heights than he or she started at, possibly acts loosely on the principles of conservation of
momentum and Newton's Third Law of Motion, which states, 'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." When an object is reflected off of a surface, the energy carrying the object (in the form of momentum) is carried into the surface. Due to the aforementioned principles, one would expect this object to be reflected back with an equal force to what it had before it first hit the surface. Indeed, this is what would hypothetically occur in a perfect environment at zero gravity with no other forces acting on the system. But, of course, nature just loves finding ways to mess around with our heads. In reality, when an object hits a surface, much of the energy it carried with it is lost into the surroundings due to phenomena including, but certainly not limited to: friction, transfer and loss of energy into the surface, and transformation of motion energy into other forms of energy (sound, light, heat, etc.). This results in an imperfect redirection of energy every single time, or, in layman's terms, you never quite get out what you put in, even though you can get pretty darn close. Now, the creators of Portal have (I am assuming) applied this principle to their game by creating a gelatinous substance that, when applied to a surface, has the ability to not only endow that surface with super-efficient reflective capabilities, but which even provides energy into the system, giving the reflecting object greater momentum exiting the surface than when it first struck. I can only begin to fathom the real-world applications of such a substance if it could actually be synthesized in a laboratory. Oh, well; I guess we'll just have to stick to our bungee cords and trampolines for now.
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