Does anyone know the right way to translate people's weight to strength? I mean, supposing these are fit people not carrying around excessive amounts of fat, how do you figure out how much heavier a person would have to get in order to double the amount the person can lift? Or how much one person would have to weigh to lift another person of some weight?

@Geo I don't think that is how strength works.

@bruglesco But surely heavier people are usually stronger. That's why there are weight classes on boxing. And muscle is the heaviest thing in the human body except for bone.

I wonder if this makes sense as a worldbuilding question. I certainly feel like I need this for my worldbuilding.

@Geo There are weight classes in boxing because there is more to fighting than raw strength.

Rember that force = mass * velocity

@bruglesco But that doesn't mean that having more muscle doesn't make a person stronger.

I'm thinking that strength is something like S = (W - B)^(2/3), where S is the strength, W is the weight, B is the weight of a person with no muscle at all, and it's all raised to the power of 2/3 because weight is determined by volume, but strength is determined by 2D cross-section.

Except I expect that B changes somewhat depending on the height of the person. I'm not sure how or if that is important.

Would this sort of question be on-topic? I'm looking through the rules and it seems like if falls under the category of a world physics question.