/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.9778256]

Can we have a size thread?

No.... not that kind. So, years ago I remember overhearing a teacher or professor basically bashing the cinematic portrayal of size. To the effect of (para.) "...when you watch a movie and you see a gigantic being moving around, you notice how it seems to move very slowly? Seemingly lumbering and generally moving very slowly? That's only for cinematic effect: to try and make it seem massive in comparison to, say, us. In reality, if there were, say, a 100ft human walking around the earth, it would move at the same speed as a 6ft human. Visually, it would appear to be moving just as fast as any other human size. It wouldn't be slowly swinging its arms or slowly raising and lowering its legs. If you were to see it move by you, yes it would cover more ground than you, but it wouldn't be doing so very slowly and plodding. It would just go. 'it moves slow because it's gigantic' is a visual trick and a cinematic trope that's simply false."

Is this true?

[Anonymous No.9778265]

>>9778256
A giant would be moving faster than a human could, but slow relative to its size. It would appear to be lumbering, it's not just for cinematic effect.

[Anonymous No.9778279]

>>9778256
more space to travel = more slow.
that's why cockroaches are so damn fast. for them we look like giant slowpokes.

[Anonymous No.9778285]

>>9778265
>A giant would be moving faster than a human could, but slow relative to its size. It would appear to be lumbering, it's not just for cinematic effect.
Yes, in fact, it is.
>>9778279
>more space to travel = more slow.
>that's why cockroaches are so damn fast. for them we look like giant slowpokes.
Roaches move fast because they have 6 legs moving them about.. There are plenty of slow-moving tiny insects and animals.

Physics, faggots.

[Anonymous No.9778295]

Pic related is basically a guided missile destroyer on legs. 280 meters tall.

[Anonymous No.9778296]

>>9778285
Cockroaches don't move fast. It's only relative to their size. You can walk faster than a cockroach.

[Anonymous No.9778300]

>>9778296
meant for
>>9778279

[Anonymous No.9778301]

>>9778300
Meant for both.

[Anonymous No.9778313]

Walk in water. Do you walk as fast? If something that large moves through the air, the air resistance will greatly increase because there is more air to be pushed aside.

[Anonymous No.9778329]

>>9778313
>Walk in water. Do you walk as fast? If something that large moves through the air, the air resistance will greatly increase because there is more air to be pushed aside.
>equating the density of air to water
This thread just keeps getting better and better.

[Anonymous No.9778339]

>>9778329
You're an idiot.>>9778301

[Anonymous No.9778349]

i really hate it when people get uptight about movie portrayals of science and physics. way to miss the point entirely

[Anonymous No.9778353]

>>9778349
>i really hate it when people get uptight about movie portrayals of science and physics. way to miss the point entirely
I just wanna know if that's how it really is. Could care less how scientifically accurate a movie is.

[Anonymous No.9778357]

>>9778353
i didnt mean you i meant the prof you were referencing

[Anonymous No.9778365]

>>9778256
I think at some point, a gigantic being would appear to be slow and lumbering, assuming its physiological mechanics are similar to our own. If you say that 100 ft tall person could move its limbs at a "normal" speed (relative to its own point of view), then it would likely break the sound barrier at anything faster than a slow walk. Likewise, it could accelerate fast enough to do some real damage to itself. The number might not be correct, but you get the idea. Increasing the giant's size even more would make the consequences more severe.

I suspect the cutoff is around 10 ft. After that, its speed relative to its size would decrease, but it's absolute speed would continue to increase.

[Anonymous No.9778369]

>>9778256
8" bone-pressed erect length
7.5" non-bone-pressed erect length
5.75" flaccid length
5.5" erect circumference

[Anonymous No.9778373]

Don’t most large animals move in a pretty lumbering manner? It has to do with your skeleton and other internal structure not scaling up as fast as your cubic weight. It’s why an ant can carry 100x it’s weight but no human can.

[Anonymous No.9778378]

https://youtu.be/20Fq2huhvEI

[Anonymous No.9778398]

>>9778256
Your teacher is full of shit. Vid related.

[Anonymous No.9778436]

>>9778373
Exactly. And not just carrying that large weight, but accelerating and decelerating it quickly is _hard_.

[Anonymous No.9779082]

>>9778365
Yay! At last.we can press the big red "Right Answer" button.

[Anonymous No.9779086]

>>9778256
Volume scales as the cube of length. Living things on Earth at different scales appear to experience time subjectively differently as a function of their size.

[Anonymous No.9779088]

>>9778256
This is a thought I've had since I was a kid and I remember having it watching "Antz" I believe lol

[Anonymous No.9779101]

>>9778369
>flacid and erect length so close
is this normal?
i'm ~3.5 flacid, 8 erect, 6.5 round

[Anonymous No.9779109]

>>9778256
that person is an idiot. They completely lack the most basic physical intuition. If they want to bash movies for unrealistically portraying size, they should bash the fact that these giant things can move at all. A giant humanoid would literally break under its own stress if it ever tried to do a motion as dynamic as jumping or sprinting.

[Anonymous No.9779385]

>>9778398
Holy shit.

[Anonymous No.9779387]

>>9778256
you can see that this is false just from looking at things larger and smaller than humans

[Anonymous No.9779399]

Hi I don't come around sci too much. This thread is fairly typical of sci, isn't it.

[Anonymous No.9779538]

>>9778256
You're not going to have 100 ft humans. Square-cube law. No more than you're going to have man-sized ants or spiders.

But if they DID exist and you saw a film of one without anything else in the picture to provide scale, they'd appear to move slowly.

Your arms and legs are forced pendulums. They don't swing freely. They're driven by your muscles. But it's more energy-efficient (and comfortable) to let them sway at something near their "natural" frequencies. Energy keeps shifting between kinetic and potential with a minimum of loss.

That frequency varies as the square-root of the pendulum's length. If gravity is unchanged, that's all that matters. The thickness or mass is irrelevant.
So a humanoid 9 times your height would take 1 step while you took 3. But each step would be longer so he'd cover ground 3 times faster than you would.

[Anonymous No.9779655]

>>9778295
There are good reasons for not building guided missile destroyers on legs.

In addition to the "tripping" problem, it would also be terribly inefficient. Same as you can go faster and further and with less effort on a bicycle than you can afoot.

[Anonymous No.9779661]

A man-shaped thing ten times your size couldn't walk at all.
Each limb would weigh 1000 times as much but his strength (proportional to the cross-sectional area of muscles) would only be 100 times yours.
How spry would you be wearing armor which multiplied your weight by 10?

[Anonymous No.9780088]

[Anonymous No.9780094]

>>9780088
You mean size thread? What are the physics of tiny humans? Would they die of cold, be able to lift many times their weight? Would a tiny human resist that step, or does the lack of an exoskeleton mean he'd die if the normal sized girl stepped on him?

[Anonymous No.9780301]

>>9779655
It's not exactly something you can tip over easily, and it's very good at traversing rough terrain to the point where it's capable of climbing up the side of a cliff face like a spider. It mainly just camps out around extremely high value targets like space elevators to defend them

[Anonymous No.9781432]

How would Aion compare to those?

[Anonymous No.9781438]

>>9781432
By this I mean artifice aion from xbc2

[Anonymous No.9781494]

>>9778256
They would over-heat if they weren't slower.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUWUHf-rzks

[Anonymous No.9782122]

>>9778285
>Roaches move fast because they have 6 legs moving them about.. There are plenty of slow-moving tiny insects

Anybody else see the contradiction there?

[Anonymous No.9782125]

>>9780301
>A few spider mechs defending a 20,000km piece of string