Twice the Size
During your sleep last night, a space alien visited, from the planet Jumbo. To amuse himself, he used the enlarge setting on his space ray, and doubled you in size. When you awakened the next morning, you were shocked to find yourself twice as tall, twice as wide, twice as thick, and so forth. You smiled when you realized that, at least, your feet didn't smell twice as bad ... heh heh.
By how much did your weight increase?
By how much did your weight increase?
posted by Zaux at
6:29 AM
14 Comments:
my volume increases 8 times (2^3), and my weight as well.
Your weight will be 8 times it's original value, so it has been increased by 7 times the original weight (neglecting the dependence of g with height).
yep ... it is
right, 8 times, twice as tall, twice as wide, and twice as thick,
3 dimensions doubled means 2*2*2.
The bone strengh will not be able support 8 times the weight. The muscle strength won't support 8 times the weight.
If you can stand up, you will probably fall and break bones.
Your bones and muscles would be twice as big too...
Agreed. 8 times the normal weight. But i was just wondering, does the weight get affected at all? The gravitational force is still the same. The mass should change instead.
If you were a small child at about 50 pounds (23kg), it's not unbelievable that you could survive being swollen to 400 pounds (92kg). Might be hard to get around, but you could probably adapt given some time.
But any adult swollen to 8x his weight is going to have serious trouble getting around, and very well might suffocate.
Anon who thinks that bones and muscles being 8x the weight is good enough: Read "On Being The Right Size"
http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html
And think about whether an elephant has the same bone and muscle structure as a human.
Let alone having a heart to do the work under that sort of pressure...
The question that concerns me is that we all became twice as thick, but we were still bright enough to answer the question.... we must all have been towering geniuses before the alien came along
While the weight may have increased by 8x, the stress on the bones will have only doubled.
Why? stress=F/A=M*g/A
stress0=Mo*g/Ao
M1=8*Mo
A1=4*Ao
sress1=M1*g/A1=8*Mo*g/(4*Ao)
stress1=2*Mo*g/A=2*stress0
If we have only doubled the stress we should not expect the ultimate strength of bone to be exceeded.
Why?
Dynamic loading of the bone will result in at least 2x the equivalent static force. Thus, if someone can jump up and down without breaking a bone at normal size, standing up should not result in breaking a bone at 2x size.
Of course, the margin to the Ultimate strength of the bones has been reduced, so jumping up and down at the 2x size may result in broken bones.
So at 2x size, we are not quite yet in the implausible territory of giant bugs and other hollywood creations.
Cam
Zaux,
I posted my solution for "Catch The Football", as you requested.
Cam
Closest real-life example to posed problem, that I could find:
Excerpt from wikipedia on Manuel Uribe:
"Manuel Uribe (born June 11, 1965) is a man from Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, and was one of the heaviest people in history.[1] After reaching a peak weight of around 597 kg (1,320 lb) and being unable to leave his bed since 2001, Uribe lost approximately 400 lbs (one third of his body weight) with the help of doctors and nutritionists"
Cam
Thanks for the "football" posting, Cam!
Cam ...
Please go take a look at my follow-up to your "Catch the Football" post.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home