In the 1920s , J.B.S. Haldane published a newspaper title , “ On Being the Right Size . ” It is deliciously grisly , and to this Clarence Shepard Day Jr. , it remains one of the most approachable papers on the overlap of biology and physic .
The paper shows its long time a niggling when Haldane open with a source to Pilgrim ’s Progress . My exposure to that terrifyingly pious tome was when Meg , Amy , Jo and Beth , America ’s most revoltingly moral girls , learn it every morning in Little Women . Little Women is localize during the Civil War . Pilgrim ’s Progress was considered sometime - fashioned even then .
do it to say , there are sixty - foot - high giants in Pilgrim ’s Progress . Haldane explains why it is n’t good to be cock-a-hoop . It essentially comes down to some very previous geometry ; field versus mass .
Imagine a cube resting on one of its sides . The side it is resting on is the distance of one side , L , squared . The volume is L cube . As the cube gets bad , L x L x L amount of loudness is pillow on L x L amount of surface area .
This is n’t just a trouble for the part of a giant that touches the ground ( although their feet have got to be smart ) . It ’s a problem for every cross - discussion section of the torso that take weight . make something gargantuan - sized looks nerveless in science fable . Seeing it basically disintegrate under the strain of its own system of weights would n’t look nearly as cool . Okay , maybe it would . But it would n’t make for an interesting fight for the protagonist .
But Haldane does n’t stop there .
By shrinking or expanding , all variety of new physics phenomena have to be deal with . Most of us have been dunked in water . When we come out , we sweep the drop off . Most of us have also see insects in water . They are n’t able-bodied to brush the droplets off them when they occur out . Water has a sealed open tension that allows droplets to form a sure size of it . That size is petite to us . To an pismire , it is huge , and heavy . A right - sized water system droplet can be , to an ant , a swim pool freehanded enough to submerge in .
Of course the most vivid imagery materialize when Haldane excuse what materialise to various beast when they ’re dropped from a great peak :
“ you could drop a mouse down a thousand - yard mine scape ; and , on get at the bottom , it get under one’s skin a slight shock and walk away , put up that the ground is passably soft . A rat is kill , a adult male is broken , a gymnastic horse splashes . ”
It ’s no wonder why the newspaper has stuck around . It ’s entertaining , informatory , and gives the lector a position that is commonly entirely novel . It ’s a paper to think before you quiz out that shrink - beam .
[ Via : UCLA . Top toon by Nicholas Gurewitch viaPerry Bible Fellowship . ]
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