The Tin Man » Shrinking

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 — 1:52 pm

Shrinking

Fun fact:

If people could shrink, they would suffocate, because oxygen molecules would be too big for their bodies.

2 comments

1 Luke 10/17/06 at 5:57 PM: Well, and “shrinking” violates the Law of conservation of matter. “Matter can neither be created nor destroyed”, thus if we shrunk, all that extra mass would have to go somewhere. And I think we need most of our body mass, right?

Or, if you conceive of shrinking to be a “condensing” effect, then the electrostatic forces between our atoms would have to weaken (if they are repulsive) or strengthen (if they are attractive). We would kind of have to do a collapsing star impression, I guess. And I don’t think that the condensed human body would be anything like the non-condensed one. Think of water and ice.

Oxygen would be the least of our problems. ;)
2 Bart 10/18/06 at 2:26 PM: But if we could shrink ourselves, wouldn’t we be able to shrink oxygen molecules too?