ANSWERS: 20
  • because they have a tough outer shell, like m&ms
  • I outweigh the ant by 145 lbs.....could that have something to do with it
  • because people will fall at a faster rate of speed, and our bodies are not made to withstand the blow of an impact that severe. ants have an very hard exoskeleton to protect them as well.
  • because their outer shell/skin is toucher than ours
  • Because ants have an exoskeleton, and 6 legs.
  • I think it's the fact that they almost weigh nothing, when we fall our weight is used against us as leverage.
  • F = m * v^2 m = mass which is proportional to volume. The strength of a structure (in this case (exo)skeletal) is proportional to the square of it's area. Thus the mass of a creature of human proportions is directly proportional to the cube of it's height (it's volume) while it's strength is directly proportional proportional to the SQUARE of it's height (it's area). An ant has FAR less volume so even if they were the same density as a human the amount of kinetic energy they would generate from a fall is a few orders of magnitude less due to their SIGNIFICANTLY lesser mass and their ability to withstand that lesser abuse is proportionally greater that a human's. The cube root of a number is usually less than the square root ;)
  • It's to do with their size and their construction (ants that is). For their size when compared to us they weight alot less. This gives them a much lower terminal velocity than us. This is where the wind resistance over the falling bodies exposed area matches that of the force of gravity pulling us down so we reach a velocity and can't go any higher (this is due to wind resistance increasing the faster you go). Couple this to the ants exoskeleton which on a strength for size basis is actually stronger than bone (if you shrank it down to that size) then you can see why the fall is not going to kill the ant. Also their internal organs are much more simplified (as such structurally stronger) than ours so the internal damage is somewhat negated by the organs trying to keep moving about on impact when coupled to their terminal velocity and their weight. This is something we humans don't have as in many car crashes you can get severe internal injuries even though your body doesn't hit anything (the seat belt keeps us restrained within the car) is because the organs keep moving and the forces required in decelerating them so violently damages them or rips them from their anchorages in the body. One interesting thing to note is that the reason you don't get giant insects is again because of the Chitin in their exoskeleton. Above a certain size the weight of it for a required strength is too great and it would collapse under its own weight.
  • No only is it becuase they're skin is tougher, but God made it like that because he knew us human would be screw-ups so he limited our bobdily powers...That is why we can not swim like fish, fly like birds, dig like beetles, make poison like venomous animals, sneeze like snakes, kill like sharks, & etc w/o any machines or aid.
  • 'Cos they're well hard , they can lift ten times their own weight.
  • Exoskeleton. If you had a body like a tank, you could fall like that too.
  • Body mass rises as the cube of linear dimension, so something twice as long weighs eight times as much. Cross section and surface area, bot of which contribute to air resistance, rise as the square of linear dimension, so the thing has only four times the cross sectional area and hence only half the deceleration per unit mass. In fact, because of non-linearities in viscous flow, the effect is much larger.
  • Thanks everyone....I guess these answers are better than the first time I asked someone...they just said that ants don't have brains big enough to understand that they should be hurt! lol
  • Thanks everyone....I guess these answers are better than the first time I asked someone...they just said that ants don't have brains big enough to understand that they should be hurt! lol
  • Well, acctually. They fall excactly at the same speed we would have fallen if we would have fallen of the porch. Which is not a very great speed is it?
  • The answers were given in several different posts. There is no single answer. Body mass, air resistence, distance, and body structure all play a part. If you constructed a vacuum tube that would give the ant the same distance to drop, relative to your or my dropping from a tall building, (it would be a very long tube) the ant would conceivably be pretty worse for the experience.
  • Proportional height of fall isn't important, it is the velocity of which it hits the ground. The acceleration due to gravity is about 9.8 ms^-2, when we fall off a tall building we are going to hit the ground with a hell of alot stronger force than the ant does from a porch. Our bodies do not pocess an exoskeleton, so our organs get crushed in the impact. Whereas an ant's exoskeleton will absorb some of the impact and then possibly crack if it weak enough/flicked from high enough. This still leaves the ant alive and kicking, walking off to heal the exoskeleton whereas we will still be lying there with our guts splattered everywhere.
  • If this is really bothering you, you could always step on the ant.
  • Because ants have exo-skeletons, and we do not.
  • they have an exo-skeleton.

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