Eli5 how can insects survive a slap from humans, a creature that’s gigantic compared to them
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Force (f) = Mass (m) times Acceleration (a).
So the force something feels on impact is a product of how heavy it is and how fast it’s going when it hits.
Let’s pretend, just because it’s easier, that your hand is a stationary wall that the fly is flying into at the same speed as your previously swinging hand. So you take the speed of the object, and multiply it by its mass, which as I’m sure you’ve guessed is not a lot because it’s a fly. Since the fly’s mass is so teensy, it would take a *lot* more speed for it to feel much force at all from being swatted as you describe, because your hand doesn’t travel fast enough for that f=ma equation from earlier to yield a big enough number to do anything, but something like a car at highway speeds will.
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