How would super strength actually work?

I remember hearing a phrase a while ago "the physics of superman"... on a radio show about a university prof teaching an intro physics class using superhero feats as examples. Googling that phrase gets some kinda fun results.

https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-problem-with-superman-and-other-physics-conundrums/
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5509958

Hmm, I think you'd need to define what "super" strength means. Wikipedia says that the 2018 winner of the annual "World's Strongest Man" competition dead-lifted 1047 pounds. Is "super" strength twice that? Ten times?

As you say, at some point biology fails -- flesh, joints, bones fail. I guess what a "non-biological" "man" would feel like to touch depends on what you want to imagine they're made of. Do you want them to feel like a machine? Are they made of tropes like "nano-machinery", that can mimic the feel of flesh by knowing how much to "give" when you touch them?

At some point, matter fails -- can't handle the application of extreme forces. What then? Is the "super man" made of pure fields?

When does this cross the line into magic? I guess when you want to write and market it as fantasy rather than SF?

Works just like on TV. Superman is chained to an overhead pipe. Superman pulls down, bending the pipe and breaking the chain. Never mind physics, where he'd just do chin-ups and lift himself off the floor.

Jeff

I remember years ago reading a set of quotes from "old school" superheroes - the guys who'd been on TV in the 70's. One of them was the 6 Million Dollar Man, who was an augmented human. The actor said he'd always wondered why his super-strong arms and legs didn't shatter his human spine when he lifted a car. He decided it had to do with adrenaline, like a tiny, 100 lb. mother who stops a car from crushing their child. When his super-stuff kicked in, so did his adrenaline. That was his internal continuity to suspend his disbelief. As long as you make it plausible, the reader can accept it.

It's also worth noting that bones can take A LOT of weight individually. I also remember in high school we watched a controlled experiment where they put a literal car on a vertical femur, which held the weight, then showed the same femur shatter to a thrown bowling ball. that hit it on its front face. How the super distributes the weight they're holding matters. Angle of impact, joints, etc.

I know one thing about this general topic, in regard to the jaw strength of primates. Some primates, such as gorillas, have a ridge on their skulls that allows attachment of larger, stronger jaw muscles, as these muscles. Presence of such a ridge indicates extremely powerful jaws.

(I know this because I was lucky enough to visit the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History with someone who studied medical anthropology, and they explained about this while we walked past displays of primate skeletons. As I recall, they said the larger muscles need that extra surface area to attach to or else they’d just tear off of the skull.)

Here it is, the sagittal crest: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittal_crest

Others have already pointed out that bones relate to muscle strength, so I’m not really adding new info so much as more detail.

I've been told that apes generally have much more powerful musculature than humans because the angle of attachment of their long muscles allows them to exert more force and utilize more leverage than a human, even without extra muscle bulk or significantly bigger bones. That's why an average-size chimpanzee who doesn't look particularly muscly can rip a human apart limb from limb without half trying if it's in a bad mood.