"Then, even if they survive, they may drown." "You would think that water would be helpful, but water tends to knock people out," Hamilton says. "Water could work," Allain says, "But you want to be like a pencil, and go as deep as possible, which increases your stopping time and decreases your acceleration."īut Hamilton says that landing in water has its drawbacks. Water could also be a good target, he says, as long as you don't belly-flop. "If it's a good tree, that could really increase your stopping time and decrease your acceleration." "A good thing to land on might be a tree, because a tree, you could hit the branches as you're going down," Allain says. ![]() So, Allain says that anything that increases a falling person's stopping distance is going to be beneficial. Soft surfaces are easier on the body because they increase your stopping distance, which in turn decreases the G-forces you feel. Survivability, he says, is heavily influenced by G-forces – the acceleration force you feel when you suddenly change speed. What you land on makes a big difference, Allain says. "A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes." "You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away," Haldane writes. Haldane, writing in 1928, sums the idea up nicely. A larger person will have a larger gravitational force exerted on him and will need a larger force from air resistance to stop his acceleration.Ĭonsequently, larger people accelerate longer before they attain terminal velocity, Allain says, and so they hit the ground at a higher speed.īigger people also have a larger surface area, which increases air resistance, but Allain says it's not enough to compensate for the stronger downward force due to their larger mass.įamed biologist J.B.S. Gravitational force depends on the person's mass. "In a normal position for a skydiver, that's around 120 miles per hour," Allain says. When these two forces equal each other out, you've got terminal velocity – the stable speed at which a skydiver falls. While gravity pulls down on a skydiver's mass, air resistance pushes back. ![]() For one, falling people aren't in a vacuum – they're surrounded by air. So how can it be that a heavier skydiver will fall faster?Īlthough two objects with different masses will fall at the same speed in a vacuum, it's not so simple for a skydiver. You may remember learning in physics class that gravity accelerates all objects at the same rate, regardless of mass. The answer has to do with the two main forces acting on a falling person - gravity and air resistance. A 3-foot fall is pretty intimidating for something as small as an ant. You've probably witnessed this phenomenon if you've ever brushed an insect off your kitchen table. "Smaller people are going to fall slower, so that's going to give them a better chance ," explains Allain. This is one situation where size really does matter. According to Allain, there are a few things you need to do. Still, Allain and others have a few ideas about the factors that might determine whether you survive a tumble from thousands of feet in the air. "Fortunately, we don't have enough data to make a trend line," Allain says. Rhett Allain, associate professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana State University, says that experimental evidence on the subject is thin because it's unethical to throw people out of airplanes for science. And Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulović holds the Guinness world record for the longest survived fall - over 30,000 feet - after her plane blew up in the 1970s, though some cynics think the real height of Vulović's fall was a mere 2,600 feet.īut how exactly do you survive such an extraordinary event? ![]() For instance, Alan Magee survived a 20,000-foot fall from his plane during World War II and survived by landing on the glass roof of a French railroad station. A handful of lucky people have survived similar falls in real life.Īuthor Jim Hamilton has compiled dozens of these stories.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |