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Interestingly, this was just covered in a magazine I was reading (in order to possibly get a job there) -
Q: If you find yourself in a free-falling lift, is there anythng you can do to lessen the impact - like jumping just before you hit the ground?
A: First of all, it's highly unlikely that a lift will "free-fall" down a shaft, because of the numerous safety devices that kick in teh minute the car starts travelling at a certain speed. However, if you do find yourself on a gravity ride to hell, jumping at the very last second will, according to the laws of physics, slightly lessen the impact.
"I've worked out that you do gain by jumping, but the gain is marginal," says David MacKenzie, professor of physics at Sydney Uni. "By jumping upwards you reduce your downward velocity, and therefore the impact when you hit the ground. But I doubt it would be enough for you to survive. In that situation there is very little you could do to survive."
Besides jumping, you could always try stanging up and using your legs as "crumple zones". This way, while your legs would shatter like pretzels, there's a small chance your head and body would remain relatively whole. |
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Kid's are very logical in their own way. I used to think (20 years ago, my goodness) that we were actually living *inside* planet Earth, that the sky was the ceiling, and that rockets had to make a hole in it to get into outer space.