So obviously when you step on an or any other insect it’ll get crunched and die instantly
As a small scale experiment, I had found some ants eating a lollipop that’s some kids have dropped near my front steps, there was a line of ants on the ground as well as ants all over the lollipop
I then proceeded to gently place a penny on top of the thorax of one of the unsuspecting ants that were on the ground, I used my handheld digital microscope to get a closer look
The ant desperately kicked and squirmed under the penny, but the weight of the coin far exceeded what an ant could lift and despite its best efforts, it was unable to get the coin off of it
I left it there for a few minutes, then removed it, and when I did, I could see that the ant had not so much as a scratch on it and it simply ran away unscathed
I also tried something smart which was to lay a small iPad on top of a larger beetle which yielded the same results
How come these bugs can withstand so much pressure on their bodies, at human scale this is like someone placing a 2010 iron disc on someone’s chest, they would surely be crushed to death
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Small things are stronger. This is due to volume scaling cubed while cross section(strength) scales linearly. If King Kong would exist, he would be crushed under his own weight and his bones would have to be thicker than his body could contain. This gets cool with micron-scale structures like MEMS. You can “build” crazy looking structures that would never work at normal scale.
One way to look at it, is to look at a popsicle. Just imagine scaling that up to t the point that the stick is as big as a tree trunk, now imagine the size of the ice at the end. If you would hold the giant popsicle side-ways, it would clearly snap the stick from gravity alone.
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