Is it possible to become a giant

As a result, a giant would be four times slower at reacting—they would think at a rate of one second instead of a quarter second. However, at least a giant would be stronger, right? Well, yes and no. As a result of becoming a giant, your total strength would increase by a factor of sixteen, but as the square-cube law applies, the strength to weight ratio has actually gone down by a factor of four.

In this range, one would be just barely audible to humans —we can hear from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Dogs for example, can only hear above 67Hz and cats above 55 Hz. Now why might this be a positive? Saturday, November 19, Justin Aujla via MsPaint The square-cube law states that as an object grows or shrinks in size, its volume grows and shrinks faster than its surface area—respectively.

Paille via flickr This effect can be seen, to a degree, in the case of the 8'11" tall Robert Wadlow, who grew so tall he required leg braces and a cane to aid his walking as the pressure of his weight was far too great for his bones.

Jordan envisioned mechs built from a steel frame surrounded by electrically charged artificial muscles that would move the joints, together with a gyroscope stabiliser and on-board power plant.

The artificial muscles he imagined are a lot like electroactive polymers. One of the reasons why the human form is so appealing as a vehicle is that it is a remarkably ergonomic design. Also, how do you control something at least feet tall?

In fact, having a human-piloted bipedal mech is more likely than one that thinks for itself. However, any kind of tele-operation control system would require a communications platform that is robust against hacks and drop-outs, and capable of operating at , times a second.

There is also the question of what would power the mech. Weisman envisioned the Battletech mechs being powered by a fusion reactor, but given that current fusion reactors are about the size of a warehouse, this is unlikely.

Those in Pacific Rim used conventional nuclear fission reactors, which do provide a high power output, but there would be concerns over safety. Providing the pilot with contextual information and situational awareness is another problem.

Haptic feedback — the kind you get in gaming joysticks — is useful for determining whether you are touching something or not. However, providing the pilot with additional sensations, that add context to what the mech is experiencing, carries the risk of overloading the pilot with too much information. Naturally, the bigger you build something, the heavier it becomes.

The pressure exerted on a surface is force divided by the affected area. When you have a bipedal system, like you would on a mech, much of its mass is concentrated in the two legs. This is a similar problem to one that the Germans encountered when developing the ultra-heavy Maus tank during World War Two. Weighing tonnes, it operated well during the initial testing on reinforced concrete, but sank into the ground during its first field test.

Who does not know that a horse falling from a height of three or four cubits will break his bones, while a dog falling from the same height or a cat from a height of eight or ten cubits will suffer no injury? I am certain you both know that an oak two hundred cubits high would not be able to sustain its own branches if they were distributed as in a tree of ordinary size; and that nature cannot produce a horse as large as twenty ordinary horses or a giant ten times taller than an ordinary man unless by miracle or by greatly altering the proportions of his limbs and especially his bones, which would have to be considerably enlarged over the ordinary.

For more of the text, click here. To see what Galileo is driving at here, consider a chandelier lighting fixture, with bulbs and shades on a wooden frame suspended from the middle of the ceiling by a thin rope, just sufficient to take its weight taking the electrical supply wires to have negligible strength for this purpose Suppose you like the design of this particular fixture, and would like to make an exactly similar one for a room twice as large in every dimension.

The obvious approach is simply to double the dimensions of all components. Assuming essentially all the weight is in the wooden frame, its height, length and breadth will all be doubled, so its volume -- and hence its weight -- will increase eightfold. Now think about the rope between the chandelier and the ceiling. The new rope will be eight times bigger than the old rope just as the wooden frame was. But the weight-bearing capacity of a uniform rope does not depend on its length unless it is so long that its own weight becomes important, which we take not to be the case here.

How much weight a rope of given material will bear depends on the cross-sectional area of the rope, which is just a count of the number of rope fibers available to carry the weight. The crucial point is that if the rope has all its dimensions doubled, this cross-sectional area, and hence its weight-carrying capacity, is only increased fourfold.

Therefore, the doubled rope will not be able to hold up the doubled chandelier, the weight of which increased eightfold. For the chandelier to stay up, it will be necessary to use a new rope which is considerably fatter than that given by just doubling the dimensions of the original rope.

This same problem arises when a weight is supported by a pillar of some kind. If enough weight is piled on to a stone pillar, it begins to crack and crumble. For a uniform material, the weight it can carry is proportional to the cross-sectional area. Thinking about doubling all the dimensions of a stone building supported on stone pillars, we see that the weights are all increased eightfold, but the supporting capacities only go up fourfold. Obviously, there is a definite limit to how many times the dimensions can be doubled and we still have a stable building.

As Galileo points out, this all applies to animals and humans too page : large increase in height can be accomplished only by employing a material which is harder and stronger than usual, or by enlarging the size of the bones, thus changing their shape until the form and appearance of the animals suggests a monstrosity. He even draws a picture :. Galileo understood that you cannot have a creature looking a lot like an ordinary gorilla except that it's sixty feet high.

What about Harry Potter's friend Hagrid? Apparently he's twice normal height according to the book and three times normal width although he doesn't look it on this link. But even that's not enough extra width if the bone width is in proportion. There is a famous essay on this point by the biologist J.