Somtimes, Superboy Could Really Overplan Things
August 24th, 2010
Superboy, as Clark Kent, needs to get out of school so he can rush off on some sort of super errand. He decides the best way to accomplish this is fooling the doctor into thinking he has a fever so he’ll get sent home.
His plan:
1. Wait until the doctor is out of the room.
2. Break the thermometer with his teeth.
3. Dump out the mercury.
4. Refill the thermometer with red ink up to the 102°F line.
5. Use his super speed to heat the glass and fuse it back together.
6. Ta da! The doctor thinks he has a 102°F fever.
1. Wait until the doctor is out of the room.
2. Break the thermometer with his teeth.
3. Dump out the mercury.
4. Refill the thermometer with red ink up to the 102°F line.
5. Use his super speed to heat the glass and fuse it back together.
6. Ta da! The doctor thinks he has a 102°F fever.
It would be hard to come up with a more complicated and less efficient way for Superboy to fake a fever. What about using his heat vision, or the super speed, to heat the thermometer to 102°? Plus, that way you manage to avoid the myriad flaws of his original plan (for instance: How did he dispose of the toxic mercury? What if the doctor didn’t have red ink? Not to mention, Superboy ruined a perfectly good thermometer. “That’s strange, every single student I’ve seen today has had a temperature of 102°!”)
August 24th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Well, obviously he could have swallowed the mercury.
August 25th, 2010 at 5:28 am
The thermometer was filled with red mercury?
August 25th, 2010 at 5:45 am
Mercury is silver colored (quicksilver, in fact), as are mercury filled thermometers. The liquid in red thermometers is colored alcohol.
August 25th, 2010 at 7:48 am
Yeah, 2 things: red mercury? Umm, no.. and as soon as I read it, I thought ‘if he has super speed, why not use the friction created by rubbing the bulb really fast to get it to 102?’
And I think if he swallowed the alcohol, he’d be dead. I can’t remember the exact figure, but my high school teacher said it was near enough pure alcohol or something, maybe Scott can confirm this?
August 25th, 2010 at 9:00 am
Official Comment
There’s not enough alcohol in a thermometer to cause anything more than nausea and maybe a little stomach ache.
Then there’s the problem that the thermometer’s already filled to 102° when he heats it up enough to melt it back together. “Red ink” may not respond to heat as fast as mercury or alcohol, but it will still expand, making the thermometer read much higher than 102°, if not maxing it out.
And what kind of doctor sends a kid with a high fever home alone with no adult supervision, and no treatment of the fever?
August 25th, 2010 at 10:07 am
Occam’s Razor, Superboy.
But then again he is a kid. He thought about the “cool” plan instead of the “good” plan.
August 25th, 2010 at 11:37 am
As any Metal Men fan can tell you, Mercury is red on Earth-One.
August 25th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Ok, first off he just happens to have red ink around? Or did doctors at this time had a lot of red ink. Next, maybe he didn’t have fine enough control over his heat vision, frictioniness ect. to get it to exactly 102.
August 25th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
[...] It is possible to over-think things, even when you’re Superboy. [...]
August 25th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
This made me laugh, thanks Scott.
August 27th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Why didn’t he just leave? Who was going to stop him? Super-Truant Officer?
August 31st, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Interesting observations. It certainly seems like he would have had to use a different strategy if the doctor was using a newer digital thermometer.
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