Why You Can't Lift People Like Darth Vader

by its very nature many impossible things happen in science fiction characters travel on spaceships moving faster than the speed of light plasma weapons shoot what is definitely not acting or looking like plasma and on the set of the expanse i gently drift into adam savage's arms in zero g clearly none of that could happen in real life and today i want to add yet another impossibility to the list it's this move right here no one can do this and science explains why doesn't it always it sure does super computing sentient girlfriend it sure does now entering the facility now i'm certain you're familiar with the move that i'm talking about even if it doesn't have an official name sure you've seen darth vader do it but you can see the classic neck lift in just about every medium from me if i actually ate my vegetables to wonder woman to rocky to even beauty and the beast but although the neck lift isn't as flashy as something like sci-fi ftl or laser swords i submit to you that it is equally as impossible as depicted and the reason is twofold we begin with human anatomy there are around 650 skeletal muscles in the human body ranging from the smallest which is the stapedius muscle inside of your ears which connects to the smallest bones in the body to the largest muscle in the body the gluteus maximus yeah i'm low-key thick with these muscles humans can do amazingly powerful things they can literally move mountains and here's literally a mountain moving over a thousand pounds he is many stronger yeah he's actually the strongest man on the planet but the muscles that you would use for the neck lift aren't nearly as impressive as the mountain here but they are more impressive than season 8 of game of thrones i have opinions consider the muscles that you would actually use during the traditional neck lifting motion if you exercise or you know human anatomy you know this will mostly engage your lateral and anterior deltoids and if you exercise you know that these muscles small they be do not lift as much weight as some of your larger muscles like your biceps or triceps especially yours uncalled for the darth vader motion isn't an actual exercise so i don't have any real numbers to compare it to but it's close enough to a lateral one arm raise that i'm going to compare it to that you know it's that exercise you do when you're trying to bring in all your groceries from the car all at once now apparently the maximum weight that a very very elite lifting human can lift in this motion is somewhere between 60 and 110 pounds or up to 49 kilograms now you do not have to be a ceo doctor professor phd lawyer private investigator like me to know that that mass is a lot smaller than your average superhero or villain mass so unless you are lifting something like a baby don't do that do not do that do not neck lift babies do not this motion is going to be physically impossible for only uh everybody yeah and if you don't believe me go ahead go ahead tough guy find a 20 pound barbell somewhere pick it up and then assume the necklace position and just try to hold it up in that position for just 10 seconds i couldn't do it i don't think you can do it either unless you train that way it's surprisingly difficult and i can't wait for all of you just to jump into the comments and say oh do you even live bro why couldn't you do that i love reading that i absolutely love reading that stuff i love reading it all day you know that i'm a person right i love it now i know what you're probably thinking but cal darth vader and superman and others some such as peoples and neck lift are super humanly strong you ever think about that huh you ever think about that first of all guy with the voice pipe down yes i did and second of all even if you're superhumanly strong this move still won't work in fact it won't make you look super strong it'll make you look super lame because physics because physics doesn't that sound really familiar it doesn't ring a bell yeah it doesn't ring a bell all right who cares the success of a neck lift comes down to what human engineers call moments a moment is a rotational force acting about a point and that force is equal to the perpendicular distance from the line of force to the point of rotation consider here a simplified version of a neck lift we have two masses and therefore two weight forces but this does not describe the whole situation because the weight of the lifted person does not act through the apparent point of rotation right at the lifter's toes there will be a significant moment at the shoulder of the lifter as you can see if a moment is equal to a force multiplied by a distance then any distance the person is lifted at past the lifters toes is going to make their weight feel much much heavier for example held out in an average arm's length a 155 pound person would exert over 400 pounds feet of rotational force on small shoulder muscles 563 560. oh um you weren't done with the diagrams yet you should go i should you should just the moment at the lifters shoulders is not the only moment here there is also a moment from the weight of the lifter at the feet acting in the opposite direction so not only is the lifting moment here more than most humans can handle because of the physics here if you neck lift a mass similar to your own at arm's length the lifting moment will always be larger and you will always tip over so unless the lifter in this situation is very very unnaturally heavy the moments here will always be unbalanced and they will end up tipping over in physics speak this is because in this trope as it's usually depicted the distance from the center of mass of the lifting person to their feet is always smaller than the distance from the center of mass of the lifted person at arm's length to that same point of rotation making the only viable weights very very small like baby small so as a super as a superhero enthusiast i can tell you that you probably don't want to do this move because if you're trying to make yourself look all strong and cool and you tip over just makes you look super lame and i know something about being lame okay so while we're talking about moments and forces here i wanted to show you a quick little trick that you can use with your friends to make them think you actually have superpowers it's all based on what we're learning today so find your strongest friend in your germpod and have them grab you underneath your sweet sweet pits hope you don't smell that bad then ask them to try and lift you up while you're very close to their own body and they should be able to get something close to a lift now here's the trick you're gonna say some such nonsense like you can cast a spell on the person or you can center your key or whatever else this guy in this hat is saying and then you're gonna very subtly position yourself further away from the lifter's body with your arms it doesn't have to be even that much further as you can see you then use your arms to kind of lock off in this position and because of the moments and forces involved because they get so much larger you should be more or less impossible to lift like you were the first time and it's all because of physics but you got to explain to them it's because of physics if you say it's magic oh no i am always watching he has so many drones so many the classic neck lift might be impossible in my estimation that's totally accurate but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to make it work trust me why can a real strong boy like this lift me in this way but not like darth vader well recall what we just learned about moments and forces where are the forces involved here of course you have my weight and you also have discount dave batista's weight are there any moments any rotational forces well actually no because the lines of force act through the point of rotation since my weight is right over his feet there is no perpendicular distance to multiply by it's zero and if you multiply the forces by zero you get moments that themselves equal zero no tipping no problem plus walmart dwayne the rock johnson here is lifting with the help of his biceps which are much larger and much stronger and here's a little hollywood insider knowledge for you he is not making this lift alone any stunt person that is doing a lift like this is working with the lifted person to make sure they are coordinated and everyone is safe and they get the shot that they want i jumped into this position using my legs and then i supported myself in the air by pressing down on his shoulders we worked together to have this effect he would not have been able to do this lift without my help and he told me that why because the traditional necklift is impossible dang where's arya's loner body i gotta try something physics forces moments it explains why the more realistic version of the neck lift is actually possible the more realistic version being when i'm being lifted with my back up against a wall now why does this work well if you think about the forces involved here there's an additional frictional force of my back up against the wall but it's pointing upwards not downwards so when you multiply this with the distance and you compare to the other moment you see that they're in opposition to each other and it provides a necessary force to make the lift much much easier but without it this lift is definitely not possible and if you think you can do it without a science hack like this you strong rows and bays why don't you hop down in the comments try yourself let me know what you think and don't do it with a baby don't feel like i need to say that multiple times until next time you can let me down all right you can now exiting the facility thank you so much to the very nerdy staff at the facility for their direct and substantial support in the creation of this here video today especially i want to recognize research assistant ashley randall and visiting scholar rudy grovler the groblinator if you want to join the facility if you want to don a silky white lab coat put it over your shoulders join me in discord every day get behind the scenes photos see episodes early get private live streams not like that you can go to patreon.com and join the facility today and if you support us just enough you get your name on ra here each and every week as you can see there's literally hundreds of you so i have no idea how i'm gonna pass the so there is one caveat here that the math bears out that if the lifter is very very very heavy such that the moments then balance themselves out then if they're also very strong they could do a lift so someone like the hulk if he was unnaturally very dense and very heavy and with his hulk arms i guess you could make it work but someone like ivan drago no way it would break his shoulders not as catchy thanks for watching

Channel: Kyle Hill

Views: 756,638

Rating: 4.8837261 out of 5

Keywords: because science, engineering, kyle hill, learning, math, physics, science, stem, the facility, darth vader, star wars, neck lift, superhero, super strength, luke skywalker, star wars explained

Id: FYPZGfFDApw

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Walter_Alias]

I have one complaint: The wall lift should still work on frictionless surfaces. The normal force perpendicular to the wall is what cancels out the moment.

The frictional force is tiny compared to your weight, which is why you slide down the wall rather than sticking to it. If the frictional force were responsible, you would be able to do the wall-less neck lift on someone just a few pounds lighter.

[u/DoctorBoson]

I tried the lifting thing with a girl half my weight. Picked her up no problemo, then told her to hold my elbows and tried again. Didn't get her to budge an inch. Thank you Kyle for giving me a wonderful experiment to try.

[u/jakewithar]

Because sc— physics.