Which Would You Rather Fight?

[Avalon1849]

One horse=sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?

I just became aware of this expression.

[MsGuy]

Well, i googled "one horse sized duck" just on the off chance you weren't abusing your pain meds and WTF! this is a real subject for discussion in the odder crevices of the Net. Who would have guessed?

AdamSmith is probably better qualified to opine on this but I think that a horse sized duck runs into something I remember as "the cubed/square problem". As you scale up, the weight (volume/mass) of the duck goes up by a cubed factor while the strength of its bones only increases with the cross-section of the bones, i.e a squared factor.. Long story short, eventually the duck can't stand up w/o breaking its legs with its own weight.

 

[AdamSmith]

17 hours ago, MsGuy said:

Well, i googled "one horse sized duck" just on the off chance you weren't abusing your pain meds and WTF! this is a real subject for discussion in the odder crevices of the Net. Who would have guessed?

AdamSmith is probably better qualified to opine on this but I think that a horse sized duck runs into something I remember as "the cubed/square problem". As you scale up, the weight (volume/mass) of the duck goes up by a cubed factor while the strength of its bones only increases with the cross-section of the bones, i.e a squared factor.. Long story short, eventually the duck can't stand up w/o breaking its legs with its own weight.

 

Exactle. Respective body-part proportions have to change radically with changes in size/scale/weight. Thus an ‘enlarging man’ a la various comic books etc would find himself in serious trouble.

Examples are all around. Look at how an elephant, not to add a brontosaurus, has to be proportioned to support itself.