How the Square-cube law denies the physical possibility of Giants?

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And what are the fundamental laws of nature that need to be changed for a creature like this to exist?

In: Biology

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Okay, imagine a person twice as tall as normal, so 12 feet high. To keep it simple, just figure him as a rectangular box shape, more or less. So he’s 12 feet tall, 4 feet wide, and 2 feet thick, all twice the dimensions of a regular person who is 6 by 4 by 1 in those dimensions. The regular guy is 6x4x1 feet or 24 cubic feet in volume, and weighs say 8 pounds per cubic foot, so 192 pounds. The big guy has the same weight per cubic foot, but he’s 12x4x2 so 96 cubic feet. Multiply by eight pounds per cubic foot, and he weighs 768 pounds.

Meanwhile the big guy’s bones are twice as thick, so they have four times the cross-section. Say a regular femur is one inch in diameter, the big guy has 2 inch diameter femurs. All that pi stuff gives you answers but in essence, the bones are only four times thicker so only four times stronger, but the giant weighs eight times as much. His skeleton just doesn’t keep up with his weight, so he collapses. Same problem happens for muscles and other bits like tendons.

If you just make something two or three times as large without changing proportions, it collapses from its own weight. That applies to anything, not just animals, but it is a limit for animal size on land. Whales are big because they are supported by water.

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