MATH0011 Lecture 6

2007/3/26

Strength of People of Different Sizes

MATH0011

Questions :

Numbers and Patterns in Nature and Life

Lecture 6

Allometry: Effects of Scaling on

Living Things

http://147.8.101.93/MATH0011/

Name

Bodywt(Kg)

Twoliftstotal(Kg)

48

WANGMingjuan

47.82

213.0

53

LIPing

52.84

224.0

58

GU Wei
GUWei

57 40
57.40

241 0
241.0

63

THONGSUKPawina

62.54

256.0

69

KASAEVAZarema

68.94

275.0

75

LIUChunhong

71.85

285.5

75+

JANGMiran

115.12

300.0

The two
Olympic lifts :

Snatch

Clean & Jerk

Will the weight lifted be

proportional to the
bodyweight of the lifter?

2005 Women Weightlifting Record (2 lifts total)

Total wt lifted / body w

T
wt

Class(Kg)

Should it be 60Kg?

Total wt lifted (Kg)

Source: www
w.iwf.net

2005 Weightlifting World Championships (Women)

If an average man of
b d
bodyweight
i ht 50Kg
50K can lift
30Kg, how heavy
should a man of 100Kg
be expected to lift?

Body wt (Kg)

Body wt (Kg)

MATH0011 Lecture 6

2007/3/26

Since the ratio weight lifted body weight does not

keep constant (it actually decreases) as the body
weight of the athlete increases, the data does not
pp the assumption
p
that
support
F M (i.e., F = kM for some constant k)
where F = maximum force generated,
M = body mass.
Note that, in theory, body weight and body mass are
two different concepts. But since
(body weight) = (body mass) x g
where g is the Earths gravity constant, we may treat
them as equal for convenience.

Structure of a skeletal muscle

Because F M2/3, we have F = k M2/3 (k is constant)

Therefore log F = log k + (2/3) log M,
i.e., slope of log-log curve is 2/3 0.67.

Total wt lifted F (Kg)

In fact, it is well known that

muscle strength is
proportional to the crosssection area of the muscle.
Let L denote the (linear) size of a
person. Then
Volume of the person: V L3.
Mass of the person: M V.
Th f
Therefore
M L3.
Cross-section area: A L2
Muscle force: F A, therefore F L2

Hence

F L2 M2/3

Possible reason for the outlier observation: superheavy weight class athletes usually have higher
body fat percentage.

blue line has slope 1, which suggests F M,

does not fit data well.
red line has slope 0.67, fits data better.

WANGMingjuan (48Kgclass)

JANGMiran(75+Kgclass)

Body mass M (Kg)

2005 World Weightlifting Championships (Women)

MATH0011 Lecture 6

The situation for the Mens records is similar.

Total wt lifted F (Kg)

2007/3/26

The Claim That Ants Are Super Strong

blue line has slope 1, which suggests F M,

does not fit data well.
red line has slope 0.67,
0 67 fits data better.
better

Body mass M (Kg)

2005 World Weightlifting Championships (Men)

Imagine a Giant Ant

The fact that muscle strength is proportional to the

cross-section area of the muscle holds not just for
mammals but
mammals,
b t also for all living
li ing things.
things
Suppose that a giant ant, whose body length is equal to
the height (say, 1.75m) of an average man, exists.
Suppose this giant ant is geometric similar to (i.e., it is
just a scaled up version of) a normal ant, which is 0.005m
(5mm) long.

Some people believe that ants are very

strong because they are capable of lifting
strong,
an object weighing 5 times as much as
their own weight, while an average man
can lift only about 60% of his own weight.
So, if giant ants that are as large as human exist, then
we human beings are doomed. (Hey, that seems a
good plot for a science fiction movie!)
Question: how valid is the above reasoning?

Let denote the ratio of corresponding lengths of the

giant ant and the normal ant ( is also called the scale
factor). In this case, = 1.75/0.005 = 350.
b d mass off giant
body
i
ant = 3 x body
b d mass off normall ant
For the normal ant, let M, F be its body mass and the
weight it can lift, respectively; for the giant ant, let M, F
denote the corresponding quantities.
Since the giant ant and the normal ants are made of the
same material, we have M = 3 M . Thus

F M = ( 2 F) ( 3 M) = (1 ) (F M)
= (1 350 ) 5 = 1 70 1.43%

a normal ant

Thus the giant ant, which cannot lift 2% of its body weight,
will be too weak to stand on its legs.

MATH0011 Lecture 6

2007/3/26

Some SciFi Movies More Fiction Than Science

This 1958 movie is

about a woman of 50 ft
tall Will the scenario in
tall.
the movie be possible?
Notice that this tall
woman is just a scaled
up version of a normal
woman. Assuming a
height of 5.5 ft for an
average adult female,
the scale factor in this
case is = 50 5.5 9.

Note that in the above cases, we assume that the two

living beings under comparison are geometric similar,
i.e., one of them is scaled from the other by the same
scale factor,
factor no matter in length-wise,
length wise width
width-wise,
wise or
depth-wise. This is mostly the case when we are
considering individuals from a same species. But this
may not be true when comparing individuals of different
species.

Now let M be the body weight (body mass) of the

normal person, and F be her muscular strength. The
stress on her, due to carrying her body weight with
her muscular strength
strength, is the ratio M F.
F Let M
M and F
F
denote the corresponding quantities of the 50 ft tall
women. Then

M F = ( 3 M) ( 2 F)
= ( ) (M F) = (9M) F

This means that the stress on the tall woman is as if

a normal person feels that her body weight is
suddenly increased to 9 times as before. Therefore
the tall woman could never stand up in the first place.

Therefore, the lion is not

a simple
i l enlargement
l
t off
the cat, although both of
them are members of the
cat family.

I fact,
In
f t due
d to
t the
th same reasons we deduced
d d
d earlier,
li
species of large body size usually have much thicker
bones (and much thicker muscles) than species of
smaller sizes.

MATH0011 Lecture 6

2007/3/26

Both the siamang and the gorilla are primates. But

the siamang, whose height is only half of that of the
gorilla, has bones that are relatively more slender.

Hence, for species

of different sizes,
the skeleton mass
S is not
proportional to the
body mass M.
It is found (Kayser
and Heusner, 1964)
that

S M1.13
Siamang

Gorilla

Metabolic Rate

Proportional equations of the form

y xb , i.e., y = k xb (k is some constant) ,
which
hi h are called
ll d power rules
l (or
( power laws),
l
)
appear in a lot of places in the study of animal
physiology.

It is observed that the metabolic rates per unit body mass

increases tremendously when the size of the animal
becomes very small.

One interesting example is on metabolic rates,

which can be measured in terms of consumption
of oxygen per unit time (liter of O2 per hour), or
alternatively, amount of heat produced per unit
time (kcal per hour), of various organisms.

MATH0011 Lecture 6

However, real data on metabolic rates (Hemmingsen,

1960) shows that r M0.75 is more likely.

Body surface (cm2)

For mammals, energy is required for generating body

heat to keep warm. Since body heat is dissipated at a rate
proportional to the surface area of the animal, the German
physiologist Max Rubner (1883) proposed that metabolic
rate r, at least for warm blooded animals, should be
proportional to the surface area A of the animal:
rA
By measuring the surface area of the entire body in a
series of vertebrates, it is observed (see the graph on the
nextt slide)
lid ) th
thatt
A M0.63
Thus, according to Rubner, one would have r M0.63

Metab
bolic rate (kcal h)

2007/3/26

Body mass (g)

Surface area of the entire body in a series of vertebrates

Body mass (g)

The law r M0.75 , which was first proposed by

the American veterinary scientist Max Kleiber in

1932, is now taken as true universally, and is
called the Kleibers Law.
However, people are still debating about the
reason behind the exponent 0.75.
One theory on this is that, since oxygen passes
through the lung, r should be proportional to the
surface area of the lung. It turns out that the
lungs surface is actually not 2-dimensional, but
is a fractal object of fractal dimension d slightly
bigger than 2. Thus r Ld Md/3, and d/3 is
close to 0.75.

MATH0011 Lecture 6

2007/3/26

Reference

Mathematics in Nature, J.A. Adam, Princeton

U i
University
it P
Press, 2003.
2003
Newton Rules Biology, C.J. Pennycuick, Oxford
University Press, 1992.
On Size and Life, T.A. McMahon & J.T. Bonner,
Scientific American Books, 1983.
How Animal Works,, K.Schmidt-Nielsen,, Cambridge
g
University Press, 1972.