Friday, April 03, 2009

Fun Fact!

When you go down a flight of stairs your knees have to handle a force 7 TIMES your body weight (as opposed to going up- which is only 2 times your body weight). I found this out after doing too many squats and lunges Tuesday followed by some hiking on Wednesday. Hellooooo Advil and icepacks. I'll be laying off lower body exercise for QUITE SOME TIME. Which just sucks. The weather is pretty and spring is usually so short around here- I'd like to be walking around outside enjoying the flowers. Eventually I'll do some upper leg exercises to strengthen the muscles that control my kneecap.

I'm hating that I live in a 2nd floor apartment right now. Oh well, it's looking like a quiet weekend at home for me!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, you know how they say that ants can carry like 500 times their own weight? This must mean that when ants climb stairs while carrying a full load of whatever the heck ants carry around that is so heavy, their little ant knees carry 3500 times their body weight. Except maybe, because they have 6 knees instead of just two, you would have to divide 3500 by 6 to get how much weight each tiny ant knee carries when the ant is fully laden. Either way, those ants must really hate going up the stairs to their apartments at the end of the day. Unless they are lucky enough to have a first floor apartment. Those guys really have it made.

I realy like your blog.

Harrison Bergeron

Heather said...

Those poor little ants... I hope they do lots of leg-lifts to stay in shape.

This is the only video I could find of ants carrying stuff that didn't make me queasy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXTY115AzwM

And this is one is about how SMART ants are!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SFRl1DEZY0

Anonymous said...

You won't think they are "poor little ants" once they figure out how to attach lasers to their heads. And that's only a matter of time, my friend. Prepare to bow down to your new ant overlords!

By the way, do you know why, in the Iliad, Achilles' army of followers is called "Myrmidons?" They were supposed to have been created when a goddess (the one who was always helping Achilles out -- was it Aphrodite? -- I can't remember) transformed a bunch of ants into human form to serve as his personal contingent.
The Greek word for "ant" is "myrmidos" or some variation thereof.

Which reminds me of a nice scene in the great John Ford film ("great John Ford film" is, of course, redundant), "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance." The besotted newspaper editor, upon seeing the arrival of the thug Valance and his two henchmen, calls out, "It's Liberty Valance, . . . and his Myrmidons!"

Harrison Bergeron