She might be crazy 99% of the time but she's not just a pretty face for the other 1% it seems

[Captaincrunch]

Me and the missus was watching Jurassic park last night when it came to the water cup scene and she came up with an interesting point.

You can hear the approaching Tyrannosaurus Rex's footsteps which seem to take roughly six seconds per foot stamping on the ground. When the Tyrannosaurus Rex finally makes his debut on the screen he's roughly 10 metres tall.

If his footsteps were taking six seconds for him for each foot to travel and hit the ground as he walked this would've meant that the Tyrannosaurus Rex would've been much much larger.

How big should he have been if we were going by his stride?

She does my nut in most of the time but god i love that woman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsGjh6ul7mE

[Charity]

The Tyrannosaurus Rex is eleventy million feet tall - or just walking slowly.

[albaqwerty]

eleventy million! now, that's impressive, I thought they'd shrunk it to get the thing to fit the screen.

[Captaincrunch]

Eh? At 10 metres tall taking footsteps that take six seconds for you to lift your foot and put it down makes no sense, you give it a go, if you have a stopwatch try and walk only putting your feet down every 6 seconds and tell me what you find as me and the missus tried it last night and this would mean holding your foot in the air and balancing on one foot and i'm pretty sure the Tyrannosaurus Rex wasn't an acrobat.

It's a bit of a noodle scratcher and i think i can remember the same thing happening in the film King Kong before he came out through the trees and grabbed the bird.

[Charity]

How do you know that the Tyrannosaurus Rex wasn't an acrobat?

[Charity]

Perhaps it was hopping :0)

[Svejk]

Or on a massive space-hopper

[Charity]

I like your thinking.

[Charity]

It couldn't be 'cartwheeling' with those arms could it?

[Svejk]

Yer just being silly now.

[Charity]

:0)

[sophie_1003]

Perhaps he was standing still for 6 seconds between each step?

[albaqwerty]

I prefer the space-hopper theory.

[Charity]

I've always wondered why the Tyrannosaurus Rex had such short arms. The space-hopper theory explains this perfectly (it could also have evolved this way so that it could ride a penny-farthing).

[lady-janine]

what about a pogo stick?

[rojash]

" this would mean holding your foot in the air and balancing on one foot "
Why? Have you got a splinter in your foot?

[Baldric]

The answer is out there somewhere!

http://www.shop4dinos...aur-Space-Hopper.html

[heathfield]

Sounds like it's walking on a bass drum! If elephants can move silently, (as they can), why couldn't T Rex? As to having one foot in the air for six seconds - why on earth should it? Surely it would have both feet on the ground for those six seconds, and just move forward one step at a time.

[rsvp]

maybe TRexs had such pea sized brains that it took them six seconds between each stride work out what they were doing.

[craft1948]

Those soldiers who slow march take ages............

[Peter Pedant]

This is a straightforward question on scaling.

Here is a ref which compares the gallop of a horse and a cheetah
http://rsif.royalsoci...8/rsif.2008.0328.full

which is free and has the advantage that one can compare theory with the live thing !

Obviously an elephants gait is different to hamster and this has been used (foot size and gap) to estimate rate, sorry rry velocity
but I have tried googling biomechanics and scaling
and not got much

Some how I think Capt Crunch knew this anyway.
or his wife