What's Missing: Loss of Strength

[Prof_Sai]

Originally Posted by Mathai

But at what point WOULD the combination of size and weight become too much? If 1/4 height results in 16 shirts, is my math right to say that 1/4 to 1/16 (The same percentage of shrink again) would result in 256 shirt equivalent, all layered and much larger than the subject Miss Dolly Bonnie?

That's right. 16^2 = 256. So the shirt would feel 256 times heavier.

The square/cube rule describes what you would expect from natural biological animals in the real world. Humans that followed these guidelines would be least likely to get into technobabble problems later on. Making shrunken humans weaker than the biology would suggest probably wouldn't get you into too much trouble. But your tinies would get injured and die too easily, and that is no fun.

I actually did enjoy the Ant-Man movies. They kept the technical details unimportant enough to the plot that I didn't need to worry about them too much. But now the writers have to be careful about future plots, as the audience might get stuck on "why don't they do what they said they could in the first movie".

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Here is a thought: When people shrink, the mass has to go somewhere. So what if some of it gets imbedded in the clothing, making it super heavy? It could become like the led aprons they use for taking X-Rays.