The human body is incredibly resilient under the right circumstances. The most striking incident in recent memory is Shayna Richardson [1]. She face planted (excuse the vernacular) into a parking lot on her first solo skydive and survived... to give birth to her son eight months later (both are alive and well today).
Wow, is this true? I've noticed that when small babies are picked up, there's a difference in their weight, depending upon whether they want to be picked up or not. Like, by doing something with their body, they are able to make themselves lighter or heavier -- perhaps by clinging more (or less) to the person picking them up, and perhaps by tightening (or loosening) their muscles.
I'm a pilates instructor, if you have any sources that discuss the effect of tense muscles & force, I would really appreciate it. Thanks :)
We don't pick up the baby as a single movement. If we did, then yes there can be no magical weight change. But in reality, there's a bit of a choreography involved. Perhaps the baby holds up its arms, you put your arms below its shoulders, you raise it slowly. During this process, surely it can control how much of its weight you perceive?
Scientifically speaking, the weight of an object cannot change unless gravity changes or it's mass changes. The forces required to accelerate that object in a particular direction vary wildly based on all kinds of things that exert a force on the object.
Off topic, but that does make me curious how "weight" works in an environment where you're exposed to more than one gravitational field. Like if you're close enough to two black holes to be affected by the gravity from both.
So it's all is down to luck.