Wed May 14, 2008 — by Rick Marshall

Can You Build Your Own 'Iron Man' Suit?

Newsflash: It's more than a bank account a dream, folks...

So what would it take to build your own Iron Man suit? Given enough money and access to scientific equipment, could you become a superhero?

The good people over at The Chicago Tribune posed exactly those questions to James Kakalios, a University of Minnesota physics professor. Kakalios weighed in on the likelihood of building various elements of Iron Man's armor, including jet boots, cybernetic helmet and, of course, repulsor rays:

It's that power thing again. If you want to send lightning bolts -- or laser beams, more likely -- shooting out of your palms, you have to carry along a power source big enough to generate them. To make a beam "powerful enough to melt a fist-size hole through a half-inch steel plate," Kakalios says, "would require an energy pulse of over 2 gigawatts of power, greater than the output of a nuclear power plant."

The verdict? Well, let's just say that you might want to hold off on making any superpowered arch-enemies for a while.

Read the full article over at The Chicago Tribune website.

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