Now that you know the four necessary concepts that play into whether or not it is possible for the Flash to run up a wall, we now need to look at the forces that are involved in the interaction.

These are the forces in the interaction. The first two forces we will talk about is Fg, which is the force of gravity on an object, and Friction. As ScienceABC explains, Friction "is proportional only to the component to the part of the weight that's perpendicular to the ground." This is in regards to how physics explains people being able to walk, but the same ideas apply here.

But before we go on, what does ScienceABC mean by "component of weight"? Force is defined as a vector which mean that it has a specific direction. This means that there are forces in up-and-down direction which in physics is called the y-direction, and forces in the left-and-right direction, which is called the x-direction. Remember back in the introduction when I mentioned that your weight is a force in the up-and-down direction, that is becasue the force of gravity always points towards the Earth, like in the image to the left.

Going back to the forces in the interaction, because the Flash is on a wall, the surface is now the wall, and his weight is no longer perpendicular to it, it is parallel. This means that there is no component of his weight that is perpendicular to the surface for friction to come into effect. In other words, he is not exerting a force on the wall.

There are a few more forces in this interaction still. The force of each foot on the wall and the force of the wall on each foot. As you may have guessed these are action/reaction pairs. If the Flash was walking on the ground there would be a force he would exert on the floor and a force the floor would exert on him, but as explained in the last paragraph, his body is not exerting a force on the wall (even though his feet are). However, the wall is exerting a force on his body.

To learn certain calculations necessary to answer how fast the Flash must run to move up a wall click the Calculations tab.