In the Season Two episode four of Sarah Conner chronicles we see Cameron and her new gal pal both sitting on the upper bunk of a wodden bunk bed. While I don't know off hand how much weight those bunks can hold it can't be signifigantly more than three hundred pounds. Cameron's new gal pal probably weighs 130-140 pounds putting Cameron around the 170-200 pound range.
Now I know people are going to object becasue there are sceneraios where such a structure can hold a great deal more weight. How ever in the scene Cameron is sitting up with most of her mass supported by a very small footprint. Also in this scene both girls shift around without causing any sort of creaking or stress noises from the furniture.
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Todeswind wrote:Or the directors simply didn't think about it and assumed that it was just something that would go under suspention of disbelief.
Which is completely irrelevant...
Not really. They sink like stones. This is part of the plot.
If that flimsy bunk bed can hold them, there's no way they should be that heavy - it looks like it wouldn't hold two of me, and I swim just fine, and have a volume not that much greater than Cromartie's (if, on the other hand, one wants to say it's simply stronger than it looks, then there's no evidence for a light terminator from it - and an actual solid piece of visual involving a known quantity like seawater certainly trumps eyeballing how strong a bed is). Where visuals conflict with an actual plot point, the phrase generally used is gaffe on the part of the creators.
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Maybe the bunkbed is stronger than we are led to believe?
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Enigma wrote:You mean that they employ Star Trek writers?
Maybe the bunkbed is stronger than we are led to believe?
Eh. It's quite forgiveable. I didn't notice it until this. But yeah, it being more solid than it looks is certainly easier to swallow than 'relatively regular weight Chromatie sinks like a stone for no apparent reason.'
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Enigma wrote:
Maybe the bunkbed is stronger than we are led to believe?
I'm inclined to agree. Especially since they are at some sort of "Youth Home" which are known for having violent and destructive youths it wouldn't be hard to imagine that this seemingly wood-frame bed has aluminum support structure.
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Cameron isn't all that super heavy. She just is heavy enough to not be able to swim, which based on the calculations strider did shouldn't be that much heavier than an average person anyway.
So it is probably a combination of both the bunk being stronger than it looks and her being not that much heavier in the first place.
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Wasn't it explained that the sinking might be more related to density than actual weight? I'm not sure about the numbers behind this, but I think that a metal coin will drop like a stone in water, no matter how light it is, while other heavier objects made of different materials will float, or sink more slowly.
Or, in other words, 100 grams of air will float, while 100 grams of iron will sink.
LordOskuro wrote:Wasn't it explained that the sinking might be more related to density than actual weight? I'm not sure about the numbers behind this, but I think that a metal coin will drop like a stone in water, no matter how light it is, while other heavier objects made of different materials will float, or sink more slowly.
Or, in other words, 100 grams of air will float, while 100 grams of iron will sink.
Exactly.
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As discussed here, it takes very little extra density for a human to sink like a stone. If, for the sake of argument, Summer Glau weighs 120 lbs at 5'6.5'', then Cameron weighing 40% more than that at 168 lbs is definitely too heavy to swim. In fact, I would even bet that Cameron couldn't swim at an excess mass of 20% (144 lbs). The bunk bed incident, assuming we aren't going to debunk it from canon for no reason other than assuming the writers to be stupid, provides an upper reasonable bound of ~200 lbs. Does any sort of computer model exist anywhere for a T-888 chasis? If we scaled it to Cameron's size and assumed the empty space was filled with density = 1 g/cc flesh we could get an idea of the density of terminator alloy.
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LordOskuro wrote:Wasn't it explained that the sinking might be more related to density than actual weight? I'm not sure about the numbers behind this, but I think that a metal coin will drop like a stone in water, no matter how light it is, while other heavier objects made of different materials will float, or sink more slowly.
Or, in other words, 100 grams of air will float, while 100 grams of iron will sink.
Exactly.
Tiny clarification since it's something we all know but other readers may not. What's being said is that the density and not weight is key for sinking versus floating, but increasing the density of a given size object generally also increases it's weight. However, as it takes very little extra weight to make an object the size and shape of a person unable to swim, the increase in density is also very little extra.
So the Terminator is heavier than a person, and heavier enough that they sink instead of swim. But it's just suprising how little extra weight is required to do that.
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JGregory32 wrote:It is also possible that terminators just don't know HOW to swim.
Possible, but so unlikely it might very well be impossible. If a terminator can dance ballet as perfect as Cameron can, it can swim. Besides, why would Skynet deprive its assets of a very useful ability?
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JGregory32 wrote:It is also possible that terminators just don't know HOW to swim.
Possible, but so unlikely it might very well be impossible. If a terminator can dance ballet as perfect as Cameron can, it can swim. Besides, why would Skynet deprive its assets of a very useful ability?
Do terminators posess lung sacks for anything? I know they don't need to breathe, but do they even have lungs at all? They may not, and use some other kinda of apparatus to squeeze air through their robo-voicebox. If they have no lungs, how does that effect their ability to float? I honestly don't know. I know I can sink if I want to, but if I died and my body started to bloat, I'd float. If a terminator had a lung it could use to expand it's ribcage, it might be able to float better, especially with a terminator's strength driving it's water treading. If they sink (I don't know, I haven't seen the show even if I know quite a bit about the termies) then isn't that evidence they lack that emergency flotation device as well?
Covenant wrote:Do terminators posess lung sacks for anything? I know they don't need to breathe, but do they even have lungs at all? They may not, and use some other kinda of apparatus to squeeze air through their robo-voicebox. If they have no lungs, how does that effect their ability to float? I honestly don't know. I know I can sink if I want to, but if I died and my body started to bloat, I'd float. If a terminator had a lung it could use to expand it's ribcage, it might be able to float better, especially with a terminator's strength driving it's water treading. If they sink (I don't know, I haven't seen the show even if I know quite a bit about the termies) then isn't that evidence they lack that emergency flotation device as well?
No lung sacks are ever shown in the show.
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LordOskuro wrote:Wasn't it explained that the sinking might be more related to density than actual weight? I'm not sure about the numbers behind this, but I think that a metal coin will drop like a stone in water, no matter how light it is, while other heavier objects made of different materials will float, or sink more slowly.
Or, in other words, 100 grams of air will float, while 100 grams of iron will sink.
Density is the important part here. Humans float in water because the air in our lungs reduces our density, not our weight, unless we're really heavy.
I weight about forty pounds more than a friend of mine, but he's got very little fat, so he sinks easily, while I float like balsa wood, because I'm a tubby lardball and my body fat reduces my density.
LordOskuro wrote:Wasn't it explained that the sinking might be more related to density than actual weight? I'm not sure about the numbers behind this, but I think that a metal coin will drop like a stone in water, no matter how light it is, while other heavier objects made of different materials will float, or sink more slowly.
Or, in other words, 100 grams of air will float, while 100 grams of iron will sink.
Density is the important part here. Humans float in water because the air in our lungs reduces our density, not our weight, unless we're really heavy.
I weight about forty pounds more than a friend of mine, but he's got very little fat, so he sinks easily, while I float like balsa wood, because I'm a tubby lardball and my body fat reduces my density.
Actually, humans float as well as they do because of body fat. Muscle tissue is much denser, which is why chimpanzees (with 3x the strength of humans, and the low-fat, muscular body to match) make lousy swimmers (that, and their body shape is all wrong for it, but that's beside the point.) Thus, it is expected that Terminators, having no fat whatsoever and a body that is presumably denser than even the lowest-fat, highest-muscle human beings, ought to sink like rocks, lungs or not.
I was going to mention something to that extent. Most Olypmic swimmers will sink in a pool if they're not swimming or treading water. Granted, pools are slightly less dense than the ocean (I don't know the exact density of salt water), but it goes to show that 2 people with similar stature can have densities that are different enough based on % body fat that one of them will sink unless treading water.
In the end, Chromatie only needs to be about 220-240lbs to sink without treading water, and 300-330lbs before he can't swim at all.
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Braedley wrote:I was going to mention something to that extent. Most Olypmic swimmers will sink in a pool if they're not swimming or treading water. Granted, pools are slightly less dense than the ocean (I don't know the exact density of salt water), but it goes to show that 2 people with similar stature can have densities that are different enough based on % body fat that one of them will sink unless treading water.
In the end, Chromatie only needs to be about 220-240lbs to sink without treading water, and 300-330lbs before he can't swim at all.
Yeah, but he also sank fairly rapidly. That kind of sink rate for a person can usually only be accomplished with significant weight assistance (and I'm talking as an experienced diver here). You'd have to have some really negative buoyancy to pull it off.
Yeah, but he also sank fairly rapidly. That kind of sink rate for a person can usually only be accomplished with significant weight assistance (and I'm talking as an experienced diver here). You'd have to have some really negative buoyancy to pull it off.
Well what do the terminators have in way of positive bouyancy? There was some discussion of lung sacs before and if those are absent, and if the terminator tissue does not include a highfat content then we're really looking at a 200 pound weight shaped like a human. That's going to sink pretty fast.
On a related note someone pointed out that if the terminators weighed a lot more than a human with the same body type would then the resistance could weed out infiltrators with simple weight scales.
If we can assume the resistance isn't too stupid then surely such a tactic would have occured to them. To counter this Skynet would have to build a model of terminator that would be close to the bodyweight of a similar person. Evidence for this can be seen in all three terminator movies, Arnold plays an assult model terminator, heavily armoured and possibly quite heavy. Therefore Skynet needed a larger human body type that just so happens to fit Arnold's physique.
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Ellie Sattler: Dinosaurs eat man … woman inherits the earth.
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Any discussion of lightweight terminators is moot at this point - by the last episode, a T-888 was able to walk over a wooden plank that bent under human weight.
As you can see, although being of above average human size, he hardly bents the plank, while John running over it a few seconds before did.
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A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
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Thanas wrote:Any discussion of lightweight terminators is moot at this point
Incorrect; we are merely able to determine that there exists terminator models of comparable weight to equivalent sized humans.
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Thanas wrote:Any discussion of lightweight terminators is moot at this point - by the last episode, a T-888 was able to walk over a wooden plank that bent under human weight.
As you can see, although being of above average human size, he hardly bents the plank, while John running over it a few seconds before did.
Sure. But you can also drive a car across a plank that thick if you have one set for each tyre. It's hairy sure, but you can do it.
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