Black'nBlue, why do Vulcans have bad night vision?

[blacknblue]

I could go on and on about that one (blunt trauma). Starting with Kirk and Spock in TOS, running through Worf rising up from his sick bed and pounding the shit out of a Romulan with one or two punches, and continuing with Archer jumping on a crewman aboard the Seleya and hammering him into the deck plates.

The only sane explanation (excuse) that I can possibly come up with for what we continually see onscreen about Vulcanoids being so easy to knock down is that that must be shock sensitive. I thought about it, and to me it makes sense that they would be more vulnerable to the kinetic energy of impact damage if their skeletons were harder than ours. A human bone has give to it. It is springy. But our bones don't have to stand up to the stress of massive Vulcan muscles.

In other words, hitting us is like punching leather, whereas hitting a Vulcan is like punching crystal. An exaggeration of course, but it illustrates the concept.

Something along the same lines of how a horse, or other really big heavy animals are more vulnerable to falling and breaking bones than smaller animals are. Kinda.

[Rigil Kent]

I'm gonna steal that one too...

[blacknblue]

Help thyself sir.

[hth2k]

Strength and flexibility are not mutually exclusive. Consider Chimps and Orangatangs. They are ~2x stronger than a human and move quite easily through the forrest canopy.

Strength and resiliance may be tailored for specific or generalized functions. Fiber reenforced maticies have different properties when different fibers and patterns of fibers are used in different substrates, Mutiple materials can be combined to give a final material with broad based applications requiring stiffness, resiliance, tensile, compression and shock resistance.Geometry and material thickness also make a difference.

When I viosited the Rutan facility some years ago I saw a section of ultra light weight carbon composite skin structure that covered the front upper fusalage. It was a half cylindrical section perhaps a meter wide and 2.5-3 meters long. The section was quite similar to a piece to corugated cardboard much like that used in cardboard boxes and about 5 mm thick. It weighed nearly 1 kg we were told. You could hit it full force with your fist and not damage it. I did and it was not damaged at all. Oh Burt's Dad was giving the tour.

If you look at Vulcan weapons you should get a good idea of what they are suceptible to. Blund trauma and slicing woulds would seem high on the list.

HtH

Opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of management or this station.

[blacknblue]

But the materials you mention are not living tissue. They do not have to allow blood to flow through them. They are not made of protoplasm. They are not constructed from individual cells, each of which requires oxygen and nourishment.

Your point about chimps and orangutans is valid. If I am not mistaken, a lot of the difference in strength is due to the leverage they gain by having extremely long arm bones. is this not correct? Just as a long lever allows one to provide more force, the long arms of a chimp or an orangutan allows them to apply significantly greater force than we can apply with our shorter arms. Their muscle tissue is not inherently that much stronger than ours, it is just longer and attached differently to their longer bones.

Or that is what I seem to remember reading somewhere. Anyone who knows differently please correct me.

[hth2k]

What I was trying to illustrate is that biodiversity may be able to account for most if not all of the apparent differences between the proposed Vulcan race and what we know of humanity and the biologics here on Earth.

The composite materials and structures illustrate how as our understanding of materials and construction techniques grows we are able to do things thought impossible only a few short years ago. Biodiversity given a similar but different environment may use similar and different materials differently and achieve similar but different results.

I see Vulcans as perhaps 2-3X human strength in some areas and less in others. What I don't know.You are doing a good job of attempting to derive a rational explaination.

HtH

Apply in several light applications rather than one heavy application for best results.