The Laws of Inertia in a World where there are Titans.
I. Intro
A. Hollywood does a remarkable job of telling amazing and unbelievable stories and making them real for us. We sit in a darkened theaters for sometimes upwards to over 3 hours, lost and immersed in worlds where the impossible become possible. We've long had an infatuation with the idea of giant robots, whether they are invading aliens, dueling giants or the saviors of our world. And ever since the first giant robots graced the pages of comic books in Japan during the beginning of the boom of their technology, we've been willing to believe that such titans could be reality. Though it's easy to accept the idea of giant robots, there are glaring physical problems with their existence. The sheer mass and inertial energy of giant robots is never portrayed accurately in animations and movies.
II. The square cube law
A. What is it - What studios never take into account however is the square cube law which states that as something grows in size, the volume increases at a much greater rate than its surface area.
B. How it applies - The square cube law has ramifications with both biological and mechanical constructs. It's why animals never got to be larger than the dinosaurs and the most massive of creatures live in the ocean where buoyancy can help negate the pull of earth's gravity. As a creature grows in size, the supports required to hold its weight needs to increase as well. Compare the legs of a mouse to an elephant. Can you imagine what a being of several magnitudes greater than an elephant would require?
C. Even if we were able to construct metal monsters of materials strong enough to support the sheer mass of them, their impact upon their environments would be catastrophic.
III. Voltron
A. One of the first mainstream American cartoons to feature giant robots, featured 5 robotic lions that combined to form a huge humanoid robot. Their mission is to defend earth against alien invaders.
B. Voltron is massive, standing 197 feet tall, yet he can jump and leap as if he were spiderman.
IV. Transformers
A. an animation is far easier to suspend one's disbelief in terms of giant machines moving among us but Transformers made the leap from after school cartoons to the live action big screen in 2007. They're of a much more manageable mass than Voltron, being the size of cars and trucks but in the movie they moved like much lighter beings, agile and quick.
B. In the final battle within a city, the transformers leap and dodge on and off buildings doing minimal damage as they use them as giant jungle gyms.
V. Pacific Rim
A. in 2013, the movie Pacific Rim made its debut, taking the idea of giant robots vs giant monsters to an amazing new level. The jaegers are even more massive than Voltron and fight monsters as large or even bigger in an attempt to defend our world.
B. We see these titans battle in cities and though they do tremendous damage to the surrounding buildings, they should not even be able to stand on the streets they are running on. Gipsy Danger, the hero jaeger in Pacific Rim would, according to the chart, weigh over 12 million pounds and stands as tall as skyscrapers. Modern buildings require a massive foundation on which to stand, and their weigh is distributed evenly over it. Gipsy Danger has two legs, which are small focal points on which all that weight is centered on and become even more focused when he starts to walk, placing all that weight on one foot. In real world earth gravity, Gipsy Danger would literally sink into the pavement as if it were quicksand.
VI. Conclusion
Resources:
http://www.technewsdaily.com/18529-giant-robots-possible-pacific-rim.html
http://io9.com/5925549/could-we-actually-build-a-robot-the-size-of-pacific-rims-massive-jaegers
http://movieline.com/2013/01/09/pacific-rim-vs-real-world-physics-giant-robots-guillermo-del-toro/
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