4 ms·
> Thirty feet is the cutoff for fatality in a fall. That is, most who fall from thirty feet or higher die. And to think my friends and I used to jump off a 2nd
by yardie 5y ago
> Thirty feet is the cutoff for fatality in a fall. That is, most who fall from thirty feet or higher die.
And to think my friends and I used to jump off a 2nd story balcony for shits and giggles. Even after one of us broke an arm doing it. Just 2/3 of the way towards certain death!
- aerique 5y agoShouldn't the speed ramp up quite a bit in that last 1/3?
- wyager 5y agoLess than 1/3rd of the velocity will come from the last 1/3rd of the fall. If you’re going X speed after 2 stories, you’d be going sqrt(3/2)X = 1.22X after the last 1/3rd, ignoring drag. Energy increases linearly with fall height though, and energy is probably what mostly kills you. (Again ignoring drag.)
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoAh, because after that first 2/3rds, you're going too fast to have time to accelerate much more.
- jacquesm 5y agoAt a guess you were a lot lighter back then. The speed of impact would be the same but the total energy to dissipate a fraction of what it would be today. So better not to try that particular trick again.
- yardie 5y agoOh to have the resiliance and cartilage of a teenage boy! Pretty sure if I did that those stunts at my age I'd win a Darwin award.
- jacquesm 5y agoI used that particular trick as my escape route during tag. We would play on this structure made from wooden rolls, it spiraled upwards, about 3.5 meters high at the top and I found that I could easily jump down as long as I bent through my knees upon landing and touched down afterwards with my arms. Magic :)
- Symmetry 5y ago"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. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."
- LorenPechtel 5y agoYup. As small kids we would jump from a tree that I wouldn't consider doing as an adult. I don't think terminal velocity is important at that scale but square-cube certainly is. You landed pretty hard but I never heard of anyone getting hurt.
- gibspaulding 5y agoWouldn't a second story balcony be in line with the floor of the second story, not the roof, so ~10 or 12', not 20.