How strong would a human shaped being have to be to bowser toss a dragon?

[Aldarion]

So in theory, we either need a smaller dragon or a stronger character for this to work with 'real' physics.

Stronger character would not help, because he would probably just bury himself into the ground trying to bowser toss something that size.

So you need to calculate pressure that tossing something size of Smaug would create. For reference, movie Smaug is 130 meters long... 9 metre anaconda can weight up to 250 kg, while saltwater crocodile can be up to 5 meters and 1 100 kg. So Smaug, being considerably larger and far less snake like, would weight a minimum of 753 metric tons (anaconda) and a maximum of 19 333 metric tons. Average human feet have surface area of 100 cm2. This results in static pressure of anywhere between 75 300 000 kg / m2 and 1 933 300 000 kg / m2, or from 738 to 18 959 MPa. For comparison, compressive strength of steel is some 1500 MPa, while medium ground has compressive strength of anywhere between 10 000 to 30 000 psi or 69 to 207 MPa.

Basically, your character will punch himself into the earth, Wile E Coyote style.

But as stated, bowser toss is a toss. This means acceleration, which means dynamic pressure. Now, I am no physicist and I kinda suck at physics... but in order to produce centrifugal force for a toss, you need to overcome gravity. Thus centripetal acceleration has to be above 9,81 m/s^2. From this, tension force is (m*v^2) / r. Using radius of 70 meters (Smaug's center of mass, let's say) and this, we need tangential velocity of 26 m/s. This means centripetal force of anywhere between 7 831 200 and 201 063 200 Newtons. This results in pressure of between 783 120 000 and 20 106 320 000 Newtons per square meter, or 783,12 to 20 106 MPa.

So yeah. No tossing dragons around unless you are standing on a neutron star. And in that case, I suggest you have a little bit more pressing issue than trying to figure out how to toss a dragon around.

Hope I didn't screw anything up... this was fun, but I hadn't done any actual physics calculations in last ten years or so.

 

[TheKillerBs]

You're missing the biggest issue. Long before the strength to lift the thing and the sturdiness of your body and the ground became issues, you'd run into the problem that you don't have enough friction to keep your position so you'd just be stuck like a car with its wheels in the air

 

[pmmg]

Pfft. While you are considering it, the dragon would eat you. Problem solved.

 

[Prince of Spires]

To give a counter argument about why it would work; The Rule of Cool.

Sometimes things just look cool and are worth doing, even if they wouldn't really work.

 

[TheKillerBs]

To give a counter argument about why it would work; The Rule of Cool.

Sometimes things just look cool and are worth doing, even if they wouldn't really work.

Well, yes, obviously you can handwave it away. If you want to know how strong you'd need to be to do it, the answer is it's irrelevant, you couldn't do it by real physics and therefore if you want to do it don't bother with explanations

 

[Queshire]

There's some interesting stuff you can do by taking advantage of the gap. Personally I like having it where at a certain point whatever ki or aura or whatever is responsible for your super strength doesn't just affect your body but starts affecting your surroundings as well. Instead a portion of it is used to help reinforce the ground below you, what you're lifting, etc, so that you don't have to worry about the downsides of super strength. I'm sure a sufficiently experienced grandmaster who realizes it's doing that and has practiced with it can come up with all sorts of tricks involving projecting strength outside your body.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

There's some interesting stuff you can do by taking advantage of the gap. Personally I like having it where at a certain point whatever ki or aura or whatever is responsible for your super strength doesn't just affect your body but starts affecting your surroundings as well. Instead a portion of it is used to help reinforce the ground below you, what you're lifting, etc, so that you don't have to worry about the downsides of super strength. I'm sure a sufficiently experienced grandmaster who realizes it's doing that and has practiced with it can come up with all sorts of tricks involving projecting strength outside your body.

This is actually something closer to what I was thinking, rather than raw physical strength (although that IS a part of it, she's no god, she's more of a mini Hercules as her upper limit, when she's both using her mana power and her normal physical strength) I was planning on having her rob the dragon of it's elemental essence (in my story, the raw energy that binds your mana strength etc) in some way using physical blows. This doesn't directly affect the dragon's weight, but using that stolen power to boost her own to then yeet it (i don't know if it's still going to be a bowser toss, even if I'm operating under rule of cool logic I want it to make SOME sense) could give her enough of an edge to throw the thing SOMEHOW in spite of it's size.

To put things into perspective, this is a universe where two decently strong mages can fight at speeds faster than the human eye can track. You know, classic Dragon Ball antics. Though mages of this caliber are very rare (It's anime logic, so of COURSE the majority of the main cast are capable of this, but in the wider world, mages of that scale are far and few between) they do exist and are known. These types of mages are often called "dragons" because their might is either equal to or greater than a dragon. Which are (currently) at the top of the food chain in terms of power when it comes to non god entities.