Spike ,'The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
1) I also guess 2X.
2) I know that gravity is measured in meters-per-second squared, so I know it's an acceleration rate. So the ball dropped from 10 feet will not be going as fast as a ball dropped from a gerater height. OTOH, I also know about terminal velocity (thanks Mythbusters), so I know that, to tie it all together, a cat thrown from a 10-story window is just as likely to survive as a cat thrown from a lower window.
I wish I had an office door I could close.
Well, I won't have one in a couple of weeks. They're moving me to a new project. Upside: better commute. Downside: no office (and certainly a lot less internet time, sigh).
a cat thrown from a 10-story window is just as likely to survive as a cat thrown from a lower window.
Really? I thought that they were less likely to survive if the window was sufficiently low that they didn't have time to get in a safe landing position.
Then again, not a fan of Mythbusters, so it's not like I saw the ep.
I thought that they were less likely to survive if the window was sufficiently low that they didn't have time to get in a safe landing position.
That's the story I heard too. And I was told babies, OTOH, are not safer falling higher, because their heads weigh too much. So they don't end up in a safe landing position, they end up head down.
Dana, don't you ever, EVER close that tag.
OK, I'm gonna start with #2 and then go to #1.
2) You drop a heavy object from a height of 10 feet, and when it hits the ground it has a velocity of y. What would be the velocity if you drop it from 20 feet? From 40 feet?
20 feet = √2y.
40 feet = 2y.
This seems fairly unintuitive to me. The way I think of it is when the object falls the first ten feet, it will spend a certain amount of time falling in the 0-10 feet range. But as it continues falling, it will spend less time in the 10-20 foot range (eta: giving it less time to accelerate), as it's already moving fairly fast. So in order for the falling object to double its speed, it needs to fall another 30 feet instead of the original 10 feet, for a total of 40 feet.
This might make more sense if I could create a graph. Maybe I will if I have the time.
I thought that they were less likely to survive if the window was sufficiently low that they didn't have time to get in a safe landing position.
A cat can wrench itself around pretty fast -- when my cat rolls off the bed or sofa or whatever (he's not too bright) he still can generally land feet-down.
Really? I thought that they were less likely to survive if the window was sufficiently low that they didn't have time to get in a safe landing position.
Okay, revise my statement for ita-level specificity: a cat thrown from a 10-story window is just as likely to survive as a cat thrown from a 5-story window, or whatever the minimum cat-flip-over-land-on-feet height is. (My experience with clumsy cats is that the minimum may be as little as 6 feet.)
Upside: better commute. Downside: no office
I'm not willing to get up at the buttcrack of dawn for an office. I have skewed priorities.
OMG, I am starving like WOAH. (Do people still say that? Hmmm.) I think I need to go get lunch, which is ridiculous, I know.