4 ms·
The usual body-size oriented headline scaling is a fallacy, because energy relates to mass (be it striking force or metabolism), not length, and mass scales wit
by blattimwind 8y ago
The usual body-size oriented headline scaling is a fallacy, because energy relates to mass (be it striking force or metabolism), not length, and mass scales with volume, and volume scales to the third power of length for three-dimensional-ish shapes (which are most animals).
So, say, the human arm is perhaps 100 times larger, so the headline-scaled striking speed would be 9000 m/s. But it is also approximately a million times heavier. The ant would hit with 0.02 J, the human arm with over 200 MJ, a punch so strong you could literally stop (and presumably completely destroy) an airliner in landing approach with one blow.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- solarengineer 8y agoYour explanation reminded me of this: https://youtu.be/_Qq6dQwLh1s https://youtu.be/_Qq6dQwLh1s