Saturday, September 25, 2010

Too fat to walk

Why are animals the size they are?
Are giant ants physically possible? No.
This comes up in the banter in an episode The Wheaton Recurrence of The Big Bang Theory which I watched on the Brisbane-Singapore flight last night.

A post on The Big Blog Theory discusses the science. Basically, weight increases with volume while function increases with area.



Astute observers (esp. Australians may recognize the cliffs in the photo above as the coastline near Bondi Beach). The sculpture above is described here.

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