- #36
crowbird2
- 15
- 0
jarednjames said:I don't know why the issue of wind speed is so big here anyway. I've already outlined the major issue and that is pressure difference required to breathe.
1. You need a certain amount of air, within a certain amount of time in order to survive. That requires you meet a minimum average velocity for breathing.
2. To generate the above average velocity, you need to produce a pressure differential. As per my above calculations, the air speed increases by the square law and so you need a bigger and bigger pressure differential with each increase in height.
I indicated above that you require a pressure differential two orders of magnitude larger than what I currently produce.
You can't waive this away and it poses a lot of problems when it comes to the bodies "internal engineering".
As an addition to my above post, an important note for you is wind chill. The faster you breathe, the greater the wind chill factor on your wind pipe / mouth. This can have severe effects on the body - heat loss rate for one.
For a bigger human, the diaphragm muscle (Thoracic diaphragm, by which we pump our lungs) will also be bigger and stronger, it will not be a problem creating the pressure differential.
You need detail computer aided analysis (considering possible biological adaptations) for determining maximum possible lungs size. Just some high school math is not enough to decide about this type of issues.