I have recently watched the movie The BFG and I have decided that I want to become a giant—naturally. But, before I begin the transformation, I thought I’d begin by finding some facts about what would actually happen if humans were giants.
In both the movie and the book, the BFG describes himself as 24 feet tall—taller than a male giraffe, which is around 18ft. In order to increase in size enough to rival the BFG, a human (approximately 6ft tall), would need to increase approximately 4 times in height. However, it isn’t possible to simply scale a normal 6ft tall human up by a factor of four due to the square-cube law.
The square-cube law states that as an object grows or shrinks in size, its volume grows and shrinks faster than its surface area—respectively. This law applies to any animal, since an animal that is twice as tall, compared to a similar animal, will experience the cross sectional area of its leg bones become four times as large, but have its weight become eight times as large. One’s muscles, bones and organs would not strengthen concurrently and as a result, their legs wouldn’t be able to support the weight of the rest of their body.
This effect can be seen, to a degree, in the case of the 8’11” tall Robert Wadlow, who grew so tall he required leg braces and a cane to aid his walking as the pressure of his weight was far too great for his bones.
The square-cube law may be a problem, but what if one was able to keep their same weight, a fixed weight, but only their atoms were stretched further apart? If one was to stretch their atoms further apart, even though their mass would remain the same, their density would decrease by a factor of 64—to 15.4kg/m3. If this was the case, they would basically be floating through life since their density is only about 12.5 times that of air (1.225 kg/m3).
Now this possibility may sound fun, but one would now have to be careful of their new nemesis—the wind. According to the Beaufort Wind Scale, one would need to be worried about wind speeds greater than 36km/h, which would bring them to 19 knots, a fresh breeze. At this point, the breeze would be enough for small tress to sway and for them to be whisked away
