> Consider how casually young cats can jump up onto refrigerators. To match that, a man would have to do a standing jump right over the backboard.
Not actually correct. Jumping doesn't scale with height. Potential energy at peak height is m x g x h. Jumping energy is f x d. Mass scales with body height cubed. Force is proportional to body height squared (via muscle cross-section) and the distance your legs are pushing on the ground (as you start jumping) is proportional to body length.
(l x l x l) x g x h ~ (l x l) x l ... so ... g x h ~ constant ... there's no scaling at all!
A similarly shaped (but very differently sized) human, elephant, cat, and grasshopper should be able to jump roughly the same height. The difference is, grasshoppers are jumping machines, and elephants have a very different body plan.
However, the elephant's leg would buckle on landing. Buckling strength goes down with height.
We don't have to imagine how big cats would scale, big cats exist; cats much bigger than men. I don't think a lion or tiger could jump over a backboard.
So can some humans... If you look at the video referred to by that link it's pretty clear that it is the tigers front paw is what is 12 feet off the ground. I believe I've seen footage of someone jumping to touch the top of a basketball backboard. This is massively different than someone jumping _over_ the backboard.
Maybe I jumped the gun, and the article was right.
If a human sized cat has about 1m more reach than a cat (higher CoG, longer "arms", etc) then they should be able to get to the top of a backboard (about 3m), by raising their CoG by about 2m.
I just immediately assume that anyone who says "if X was the size of a human" is wrong, because there's so many bad examples.
Not actually correct. Jumping doesn't scale with height. Potential energy at peak height is m x g x h. Jumping energy is f x d. Mass scales with body height cubed. Force is proportional to body height squared (via muscle cross-section) and the distance your legs are pushing on the ground (as you start jumping) is proportional to body length.
(l x l x l) x g x h ~ (l x l) x l ... so ... g x h ~ constant ... there's no scaling at all!
A similarly shaped (but very differently sized) human, elephant, cat, and grasshopper should be able to jump roughly the same height. The difference is, grasshoppers are jumping machines, and elephants have a very different body plan.
However, the elephant's leg would buckle on landing. Buckling strength goes down with height.