So lets say no nano technology or anything like that. Steroids are ok…How strong can a human get? At what point could a human get no stronger? I know it depends on the person but there has to be a certain rang. Would the limit be not the mussels but the bones on a person being able to support? To make things simple lets use easy tests such as bench press. What would the limit be? Would it be the person not being able to consume enough calories to support the size?
Is there a record on whats the most a person has ever lifted, puched, pulled .ect
There are records for various lifts, but they’re generally set by people using special clothing that’s designed to make that lift easier. If you allow that kind of equipment, it’s easier to find numbers, but it’s not clear that you should.
Depends on what you mean by the strongest too. I bet some of those powerlifters wouldn’t score that high in a Strong-man’s competition. (I know some do cross train, excluding those, unless they are the record holders)
I’m not certain that it is possible to answer this question with any degree of certainty as it is posed. One might be able to to get a general range of performance for average people, cross reference against that of professional athletes, cross that against size and weight, and make a prediction based on aberrantly large humans like Dalip Singh to get an upper limit. Of course adrenaline gassed “super strength” can surpass even those abnormal performances. I should think to answer this accurately we need a tighter set of constraints.
Yeah, has one of those huge Swedish guys on World’s Strongest Man ever had a semi fall on his toddler?
If you’re asking for the strongest, I’d think you’d want to know how much force a human can produce. That calls for tests that are either like powerlifting (testing maximal strength) or olympic lifting (testing strength-speed). The feats of strongmen are impressive, but they’re more concerned with maintaining a non-maximal level of force production.
Hmmm. World’s worst-ever premise for a Myth Busters episode…
People with “bench shirts” have pressed over 1000lbs. According to this article (from 2004) the record with no special clothing is just over 700lbs:
Video of 1000+lb bench press:
Looks like the actual range of motion is pretty limited - huge chest so the weight isn’t moving a long way.
Anyhow, I googled for the strength of human bone and found one medical article quoting numbers for a “wet human femur” - IIRC your leg bones are some of the strongest in the body so let’s use those numbers as a starting point.
http://silver.neep.wisc.edu/~lakes/BoneAniso.html
In pure compression bone is incredibly strong - they quote 205MPa in that article, that’s about 29,700psi. Even with relatively small bones in your forearm I don’t think you’ll be crushing them anytime soon (theoretically capable of handling many tons - we’re ignoring bending and eccentric loading which brings up P-delta effects).
I tried a back of the envelope calculation on the upper arm - take a bone one inch square, 18 inches long, assume that it’s fixed in place at one end and that you apply a transverse load at the other end to failure, where the upper surface fails in pure tension (135MPa from that article). This isn’t really matching the geometry and mechanics of your arm but it’s a start.
I’ll spare you the math but I got something along the lines of 3600lbs of force.
Breaking the bone in pure shearing mode (ultimate strength about 71MPa) would require even more force, over 10,000lbs.
So let’s say 3600lbs minimum on a given arm. With two arms that’s 7200lbs as an upper limit before the bone will break.
This makes me think two things:
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Those numbers sound awful high. 5 tons to shear a 1" thick sample of bone?
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If these numbers are even vaguely in the ballpark then I don’t believe that the bones will give out first in a heavy lift, it’ll be the muscles and ligaments and such - something will rip out and that will end the lift. Anyone got similar numbers for strength of muscle fiber and other connecting tissue?
There will also have to be some limits on how big the muscles can get before you just can’t move them - the chest, shoulder and arm muscles required to move 7200lbs would be pretty huge.
Dunno if caloric intake would be a problem, there have been several people who weighed over 1000lbs and they ate enough to stay that way; admittedly a lot of food and they weren’t very active.
No numbers, but from what I hear the tendons and other connective tissues can’t get anywhere near as strong as muscles. This presents a problem for powerlifters and other strength athletes.
Silly SNL clip: The All Drug Olympics… Just because.
Thanks for the replies, i thought about mentioning no exoskeltons which would also include powershirts but decided not to. So it seems like that the first limitation would be the size of the musscles preventing movement?
Could you go through the math? I get about a twentieth of that if you’re idealizing the arm as a cantilever beam and using a 1"x1" square cross-section.
If the stress varies linearly with depth, then the bending moment that causes failure is 1/219575psi1"*0.5"2/3"=3262.5lbin. That’ll be equal to the load times 18in, so the load that causes failure is 181.25lbs.
There’s a gene that restricts muscle growth. Apparently in dogs and cattle it’s sometimes lacking and you get animals that look like this . Apparently there was a German boy that was born with the same mutation. I wonder what the end result will be.
Dangit, I knew my result sounded high, I forgot to change my torque to an equivalent force at the end of the moment arm so off by a factor of 18 inches.
As a fan of superheroes, I can tell you that Ben Grimm (the Thing) can lift 5 tons.
Meanwhile Bruce Banner (the Hulk) has his strength increase as he gets angrier…
More like 75, unless he’s been radically depowered.
Oddly, it looks like my black cat. WTF.
Just wait until that kid needs a spanking when he’s three.
“Yeah, let’s see you try it, Daddy.”
EmmaJane
I’ve been rereading Fantastic 4 from the beginning, which is where I thought the figure was given but … but I can’t find it! :o