I Didn’t Know That. . .

Q: Can a giant animal such as Godzilla actually exist?

A: Mathematical principles say it cannot happen, according to mathematician Keith Devlin of Stanford University. When the height of any animal is doubled, its weight will increase eightfold (that is, 2 cubed), while the cross-section of its bones will only be doubled (that is, 2 squared). Unless the bones were made of some super-strong material, such as platinum, they simply would not be able to support the increased weight and the animal would collapse on itself.

To illustrate, say that you have a sugar cube and want to make a giant sugar cube three times its size. To do so, you would have to stick together 27 sugar cubes. The reason is that the new cube, like the volume of Godzilla, would not only have to be three times wider, but also three times deeper and three times higher (3 cubed equals 27). But each layer of the giant cube, like the cross-section of Godzilla’s bones, would contain only nine cubes (3 squared equals 9).