being a nerd and a guy who’s hyperfixated on steelix rn i had to do this lol..just thought i’d share my entire process cus it looks absolutely ridiculous
i started out with the formula M = ρV (mass = density x volume).
it’s likely made of rock and metal, which has been compressed under extreme conditions. it’s also “harder than a diamond” (pokedex entry from heartgold). i estimated a rough density of 15,000kg/m^3, for steelix, about twice the density of regular steel.
volume was tricky, but i went off a photo of brock and steelix together and imagined it as a cylinder. brock is about 175cm tall, so i used that to estimate the average radius of the spherical sections of its body, about 0.6m by eye. then, by using πr^2h, i found out that the approximate volume of steelix is 10.4m^3.
it’s true mass would be around 15,000 x 10.4 =156,000kg (343,921lbs). of course it’s not gonna be 100% accurate but this was still pretty fun to do haha
by m0rute
42 Comments
Cool. Pokedex entries likely written by 5yo so dont mind about it
A friend of mine back then calculated the density of Wailord and if I remember correctly it was less dense than air and should therefore be able to use fly. So for his birthday we hacked in a wailord with levitate and fly
Steelix is not fully made of metal. Probably just a normal snake inside the metal coat. People really think he is fully made of steel just ’cause he is a steel type?
Most Pokemon weights make no sense to the point where it’s probably on purpose or something. The heaviest Pokemon (Celesteela, Cosmoem, Eternatus, Primal Groudon etc) weigh less than an average elephant, and like 1/200 the weight of a blue whale.
Hmm this seems extremely heavy to be handling such a cylinder.
The cylinder must remain unharmed.
I always defer to things like Capcom’s height and weight measurements, in that Japanese game devs do not really know/care beyond ‘sounds about right’. Sagat was like 72KG at 7’6 and so on.
In-universe, you can similarly just say that kids don’t have a clue.
Hes got organs (he has a mouth) and is probably a rock under a metal coating
I think it’s a massive issue that came about when the first games released, and then they just decided to never address it. Even my 8 year old was like “there’s no way that Onix weighs 463lbs, he’s made out of rocks!”
15 tons still seem too light for a creature of that size made of steel coated rock.
Rounded up, that is 172 tons. You could also say about 115 prii (plural of prius) or 1.38 million bananas. Crazy.
I checked it the opposite way – took its mass and length and saw what diameter it would be. It wound up being a reasonable size for an ordinary snake, if it were made of steel.
pokemon go steelix is about 200 to 1000 kgs
There are human that weight more than Steelix and Onix.
Very nice.
I remember reading something about T-Rex and how it would take about 50 years for it to get to the size we are familiar with in media like Jurassic Park.
Then we look at creatures like Groudon who’s only like 10-15 ft in the Pokedex but in the movies he’s a fuckin living titan.
So I just assume certain Pokemon take long as hell for them to reach what they should actually weigh and measure. Like a HC of mine
I want someone to do the math for Cosmoem.
I feel like the real easiest explanation for most of this is that the world of pokemon simply has lower gravity than our world. Also that certain pokemon (like Steelix) may be relatively squishy on the inside rather than just rock/metal/dirt.
*Its. r/theydidthemaths
Did the math recently totally unrelated to Pokemon or anything, but at 400kg Steelix weighs about as much as 80 traffic cones
> Steelix doesn’t feel heavy enough so I estimated its weight based on entirely pulled-out-my-ass numbers
So you did the same thing as GF? Good job, buddy.
The anime made them bigger than they should have been. Onix and steelix’s height should be relating to their length.
spherical volume is 4/3(pi)(r^3)
Wailord is supposed to weight 398KG while a full grown sperm Whale is around 45 Metric f*cking Tons!
Even a baby sperm whale is around 1000KG …
wailord is definitely NOT 877 lbs
They’re creatures made of ‘light’ energy.
When they die, they fade, not decompose. Unless its the Manga version. Some brutal deaths there
steelix can float in the air. it being lighter than it looks is intentional. also, i heard it’s hollow inside, but i don’t know if that’s 100% true.
But Steelix is hollow from inside. It needs organs to be alive.
In the anime it is shown that steelix is just Onyx covered in steel when struck hard enough reverts back to onyx
Maybe it’s hollow inside? You can’t explain pokemon biology with real life physics…
Its probably to stop a heavy slam user getting 120 power against… everything.
It’s mandatory that the cylinder steelix remain unharmed
The only assumption here I’m willing to question is your density estimated at about twice-ish that of normal steel. Hard materials and dense materials aren’t the same, and hardness in steel usually comes at least partially from the addition of carbon (the same substance that forms diamonds) which is less dense than iron is. Steelix might also as you said have some rocky bits, maybe some internal organs or mechanisms that make it not entirely solid. There’s a good chance it’s actually less dense than regular iron.
But good job!
(Fun fact: hard materials can also be incredibly brittle. Hardness is resistance to deformation, not to breaking. That’s toughness, and really tough materials are often only moderately hard. A lot of steels are actually a pretty good example of that. A knife that blunts under hard impacts doesn’t break.)
But surely that’s if it’s solid steel? Whose to say it’s innards aren’t like bird bones and high strength but really porous and weight saving? Or that it’s just its skin and it’s just a big hot dog inside?
If he’s got a living body, organs and etc, the Steelix is not solid metal, but just a metal coat(ing) skin, so we should recalculate it haha
Considering a conservative case, the steel could be an outer layer. So composition by wt% of steel could be as lower, like 50%. Second, the density of stone (granite) is about 2700kg/m3 and should be considered. If steelix is 50% granite by mass, a stone core below a mantle of steel, it would reduce the density to 0.5(2700)+0.5(15000) = 8850kg/m3. Which still works out to a mass of 92,040kg lol.
It is like Magcargo having a body temperature double of the sun’s surface, Kadabra being a person who just woke up as a pokemon or Larvitar eating mountains.
Steelix are canonically 30ft 2in long. I think that a self referential measurement would likely be more accurate since from there you’re only worried about proportions being correct in the art, which are typically much more accurately portrayed across individuals of the species compared to scale. Plus you’re using the generic weight from the Pokedex so you should use the length from the same source.
A series of spheres seems accurate enough as an approximation. Not sure I agree with the density assessment. Pokemon eat, including steelix, it also clearly has some form of less dense biological material given that it has eyes, and a mouth. Even if we were to assume that all of it’s organs are in it’s head it would still make steelix considerably lighter. Additionally I doubt that even the parts without organs are uniformly dense. Steelix evolves with a metal coat which implies a steel outer layer rather than solid super-steel body. I think you’d likely get a more reasonable figure by assuming 1-2in thick steel spheres filled with a common rock of your choice – though personally I would choose something that is found in the same areas as diamonds since his mega form has large diamond sections on it. The Mega form is also why I’d be hesitant to take the text portion of the Pokedex at face value – theoretically Steelix should be less hard than diamonds if diamond is a mega evolution for him.
Some times it feels like pokemon weight is a placeholder for the imagination, or a kind of comparative unit rather than actual data. Like saying, take it with a (huge) grain of salt
Doesn’t this support the idea that Pokémon like Steelix and Onix are not completely made of rock/steel? Seems much more probable that they have rock/steel skin and that they have internal organs just like any other animal or other Pokémon.
I work at an aluminum plant and the ingots we cast weigh around this much.
I can say that you’re spot on from what I can estimate steelix to weigh also from my experiences
I bet your girlfriend was very impressed
Density = 15,000 kg/m³ is very high
Even most metals don’t reach that
Only very dense materials (like tungsten ~19,000) get close
More realistic estimate: ~60,000–70,000 kg
Steelix… use body slam…
https://preview.redd.it/p2wnxtqeveyg1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0de0f1719ad9d462eb79b637cdf4b3956374ce81