I’m sure we can expect breathless round the clock coverage. At least until some celebrity dies young, at which point all other events and happenings on the planet will cease to exist for CNN for a period of time equal to at least 1/2 an AnnaNicole event but rarely as large as an OJ.
Looks like I picked the wrong week to uninstall that “insert appropriate movie reference” plugin.
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I’m staying the fuck well away from you. Certainly more than 30’. I may have to think about a restraining order.
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Has this been a plot on CSI yet?
Geddit?!
You have it backwards. Small items will fall more slowly than large items (of roughly the same shape). This is why cats survive 30 story falls and people do not. You are right that the downward acceleration due to gravity is the same, as Galileo proved. But the difference comes from the effect of air resistance. The upward force of air resistance is proportional to the cross sectional area. This is bigger for larger objects.
But, that’s force and we are talking about acceleration, ie force over mass. Give two objects of the same shape and different sizes. Let the ratio of sizes in any ONE dimension be r. Then the difference in surface area is r^2, and the difference in mass is r^3. So, the difference in upward acceleration from air resistance is r^2/r^3 = 1/r. The smaller object has a larger deceleration from air.
In the book/paper example, you’re changing the shape of the object. Same surface area, more mass.
Also, all objects, big or small, attract the earth to themselves just as much as the earth attracts them. It’s just that we can ignore the effect for smaller objects.
Larger animals aren’t more prone to injury from falls because they fall faster, they’re prone to injury because of the larger forces involved. An elephant dropped from a six-foot height would likely break bones while a mouse falling the same speed and distance would be unfazed. That’s why humpback whales breach backwards—an animal of that mass doing a belly-flop could crush its internal organs.
Anyone here who has actually packed a parachute care to weigh in on the whole “pebbles falling out of parachutes” theory? I never had to pack my own but I’m fairly familiar with the process and given how OCD the packers tend to be because of the inherent safety issues I have a really hard time imagining that someone just didn’t notice something like this.
I believe you were indirectly replying to me. Please allow me to clarify. It seems fair to assume that the camera and the hypothetical meteorite were falling at an altitude above the earth where wind resistance has a significant effect on velocity, as suggested by the use of the parachute.
Thx… plus this from the actual guy who shot the footage:
Anders Helstrup, who belongs to the Oslo Parachute Club said “I got the feeling that there was something, but I didn’t register what was happening,”
‘When we stopped the film, we could clearly see something that looked like a stone. At first it crossed my mind that it had been packed into a parachute, but it’s simply too big for that.’
Takes off sunglasses - “force equals mass times acceleration. only not today.”
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