Invisible Strength
Sama Khan
Award: Top 100
School: glenbard west high school
Teacher: nicholas szarzak
Category: Natural
Photo #21053
Invisible Strength
In my image of two ants carrying a grain of rice across a marble floor, the relatively tiny ants are able to carry a much heavier load because of a combination of center of mass shifts and the square-cube law.
The ants' strength in being able to carry such a load is derived from the square-cube law, telling us that when an organism decreases in size, its volume drops by the cube of the scale, while the cross-sectional area of its muscles only drops by the square. This mathematical ratio means that an ant's muscles are significantly stronger relative to its own body mass, which allows them to produce very large upward forces like the one depicted in the photo.
However, an element of balance is crucial for an ant to successfully lift a larger object. If the ants' center of gravity remained the same as when at rest, the much larger grain of rice would cause a torque near the ants' heads and cause them to fall over. This is however not the case: in my photo, we can see that the ants have anchored onto the floor with their back legs, thereby shifting their center of mass backwards in their body and allowing them to stabilize themselves as they move the grain of rice together.
This combination of physics concepts allows ants to lift up to 50 times their body weight.
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