why are people heavier when they’re “dead weight”?
In: 7
Often times when being carried a person will use their own muscles to try and help balance/move them. When they’re dead weight all of the lifting/strain falls on the person carrying/dragging them.
They’re not heavier, they’re harder to handle. Imagine a 20-kilogram broomstick and 20 litres of water in a 40-litre water balloon.
They both weigh 20 kilograms but that broomstick has its weight divided across a large area that is nicely balanced so it’s easy to pick up. While that water balloon has no easy handholds and wibble wobbles all over the place, making it hard to move.
When you pick up a conscious person, they’ll try to help balance their weight. When you pick up an unconscious person, it’s very hard to balance as the limbs and head keep moving and thus shifting the weight.
People feel heavier when they are unconscious because their body has gone limp. This limpness means that the person’s weight is imbalanced and constantly shifting. So, one would have to put in more effort to hold a person in such a way that their weight remains equally balanced.
An unconscious person is flaccid and awkward to lift because his body adjusts and absorbs our attempts to lift it as a unit. A conscious person’s body offers far greater muscular tone and thus allows itself to be lifted more as a rigid unit. In other words, it doesn’t ooze, stretch, resist, or absorb our efforts to lift it. A fluid body absorbs the work done on specific points of itself. But if you place each item (steel box and sack of potatoes) on a palette and lifted them both with forklifts then they would be equally easy to lift.
If you ever tried to pick up a 5 year old that wants to be picked up vs one that does not, I guarentee the one that does not want to be picked up is 2X the weight that does. Now put them both on the scale they weigh the same. Something else is happening. Maybe with the their magnetic field at the time. I dont know.
Latest Answers