I’ve been hanging around Freerepublic for more than a decade ... that has to be one of if not the most devastating squelches encountered. Well done!
Thanks, MHginTN, I appreciate the kudos. At the risk of piling on, here's another one that should hit him again. . .
"The bigger they are, the harder they fall. — Joe Walcott
A scientific principle (Emphasis mine—Swordmaker) often ignored in media:
"When an object undergoes a proportional increase in size, its new volume is proportional to the cube of the multiplier and its new surface area is proportional to the square of the multiplier.For example, if you double the size (measured by edge length) of a cube, its surface area is quadrupled, and its volume is increased by eight times.
The point of this law is that with living beings, strength is (more or less) a function of area (the strength of a muscle or bone is proportional to the area of its cross-section, not to its total volume), but weight is a function of volume. And Newton's famous Second Law (the "force = mass × acceleration" one) means that if you double a critter's height while keeping it the same shape, you end up with four times the muscle power moving eight times the mass, so instead of having the same relative agility as the original, the double-sized creature actually has only half. The same goes for most machinery.
This applies to flyers as well: Double the size, and you get four times the wingpower attempting to keep eight times the weight airborne, so the creature's ability to fly has actually been cut by half. Helicopters are hit particularly hard by this law; the largest payload of a cargo helicopter versus the world's largest airplane is 20 to 275 tons.
. . .
Again, the law is not limited to living creatures, but applies to anything with mass (and, well, everything has mass): A skyscraper twice as wide and tall as another will have eight times the weight, and require a far stronger support structure — wood and brick just can't hold the weight. Likewise, the humanoid Humongous Mecha needs incredibly strong legs to hold its massive frame upright (probably some sort of Unobtainium), and that's not even considering how the ground beneath it also needs to be able to support that same amount of weight without caving in, or the fact that it needs some incredibly powerful motors just to get those powerful legs and arms moving (which is why we call them Impossibly Graceful Giants.
Which brings us back to those long graceful necks of the sauropods and just how do they work being made out of Calcium Apatite bone and Young's Modulus for bone is 1.50 x 1010 N/m2 and that the bone will fracture if more than 1.50 108 N/m2 is exerted on that bone. Yet far greater than that amount of force has been calculated to be on the neck vertebrae just a couple meters beyond the shoulders of even some of the smaller sauropods. Is anyone suggesting carbon fiber in the sinews????