Saturday, 5 January 2008

"US worker survives 47-storey fall"

Miraculous.

As a rough and ready calculation for how long he was in the air, divide height fallen (in metres) by five and then take the square root. This chap fell 150 metres ÷ 5 = 30, square root of which is 5.5.

To check this:
a) Acceleration due to gravity is 9.81 m/s2
b) If you fall for 5.5 seconds your terminal velocity (ignoring wind resistance) is 5.5 x 9.81 = 54 m/s,
c) So your average speed is half that = 27 m/s.
d) He fell 150 metres at an average speed of 27 m/s, 150 ÷ 27 = 5.5.

2 comments:

CatWoman said...

Maybe he fell on his dead brother. The body may have cushioned him at impact. Ah these Mexicans, they're of some strong stock aren't they? LOL

Mark Wadsworth said...

Apparently he was in one of those window cleaning platforms, he lay down flat and the platform absorbed most of the impact.