• Question: why does muscle way so much?

    Asked by ryantm to Helen, Jenni, Mark, Martin, Stu on 18 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Mark Burnley

      Mark Burnley answered on 18 Jun 2011:

      A very large percentage of muscle tissue is water, and so it doesn’t weight a whole lot more than the same volume of water. Interestingly, this is one of the ways in which we measure body composition. Because body fat floats in water, but muscle and bone does not, we can work out how much fat and muscle/bone you have by weighing you underwater and comparing it to how much you weigh in air. Muscle weighs more than water because it also contains proteins and other molecules that are heavier than water.

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