I bet a lot of you reading this today have seen the most famous Bruce Lee demonstration where in he completes dozens of push ups using only a finger and a single arm. That one arm, one finger push up is really amazing, so amazing in fact that some people go to the extent of proclaiming that he can kill a person by puncturing his skin and internal organs. Is this real? Is this possible? Or is this just a myth? Let's examine this scientifically.

Bruce Lee weighed approximately 126-132 lbs at his prime. Using this data, the normal man exerts at least one half of his body weight to his arms while doing push ups. I am saying at least because while doing push ups, you tend to accelerate more when pushing yourself up, that creates temporarily a force or pressure on your arms greater than one half your body weight, we can approximate this to an average of sixty percent of the body weight. That means that seventy eight pounds of pressure is applied to the arms when a 130 lbs man is doing a normal push up.

So if he can do a one finger, one arm push up, he applies a minimum seventy pounds of pressure on the tip of his finger. The area of the tip of a regular finger is approximately 0.3 square inches. That's an equivalent of 260 pounds per square inch of pressure. We get that by dividing 78 pounds by 0.3. That means that Bruce Lee's fingers can exert a force greater than 260 pounds per square inch. We just do not know how much can he apply when fighting.

The average human skin will start to rupture when it is applied with 460 pounds per square in of pressure. So, if you will only take the data gathered from the one finger push ups, it is clear that the pressure is not enough to rupture the human skin. But two hundred sixty pounds per square inch can definitely cause serious injury, muscles can rupture, internal organs can get damaged even if the skin is not ruptured. So, the conclusion to the question is, yes, Bruce Lee can definitely kill using a single finger!

But wait, we didn't consider the finger nails of Bruce Lee! If Bruce Lee forgets to trim his nails even for two days, the pressure applied will be focused more on his fingernail tips, that will greatly focus the pressure and the 460PSI will easily be reached.

So now we know that Bruce Lee can kill using a finger with or without rupturing our skin!

Now go out and share our little "Mythbuster" calculations with your friends, I bet they would like to know that Bruce Lee is truly a legend up to this day.