• save_the_humans@leminal.space
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    7 days ago

    You mean the inverse square law? Imagining a square law here, gravity would increase as objects got further away, and objects would appear four times larger at twice the distance… Weird.

    • itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 days ago

      It’s not talking about gravity, but about weight. Normally, any living being or construct is limited in size, because cross-section, which determines structural integrity, grows with the square of the size, but volume and thus weight grows with the cube. Now with levitation magic, on the other hand…

    • juliebean@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      the square-cube law refers to how if a thing gets uniformly scaled, its surface area scales by the square of the factor, but its volume scales by the cube. if you grew a human, say, to 10 times its normal height, the cross sectional area of their long bones would increase by a factor of 100, while their weight would increase by a factor of 1000. this is a thing that crops up all over discussions about fantastic architecture, engineering, and biology.