Today I learned

10320 readers

1 users here now

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

100

TIL that as you increase your walking speed there is a point where walking any faster would take more energy than running (theconversation.com)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by snek_boi@lemmy.ml to c/todayilearned@lemmy.ml

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 25 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

The study of this is called allometry, and if you know the bone lengths of a creature you can generalize the formula to figure out when that animal will change from any one gait to another (like trot, canter, gallop, etc). This was used on Jurassic Park to figure out when the T-Rex would run (although I believe they ended up fudging it for coolness factor).

[–] tunetardis@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I once had a dream featuring a T-Rex hopping like a kangaroo and woke up thinking wait, how would we know they didn't do that? I guess this answers my question.

[–] moody@lemmings.world 4 points 5 months ago

They can tell from the bones where the muscles attached, and what movements they made. They could piece together an animal's walking gait just from that.

Looking only at a dead person's bones, one could deduce what sports they practiced, for example.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I would have found it cooler if it was 100% accurate just like the black hole in Interstellar.

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They fudged everything but the appearance of the black hole in that movie.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 6 points 5 months ago

nope, they fudged that too

edit: they ignored the doppler effect