If you time it right could you negate some of gravity’s speed by jumping before hitting the bottom?
not enough to make a difference. I’m sure someone will be along soon to do the math, but no matter if you’re Michael Jordan jumping up, you’ll still be going down far faster than you can go up.
You’d be better off carrying a portable airbag, lying down on it, and setting it off about 1/2 second before your elevator hits bottom. Good luck.
Such airbags would be great for elevator riding paranoids. I’ve got a few other ideas for other sorts of paranoids. Parachutes for the air-traveler. They should fit in overhead, and I don’t theink they are contraband on airlines…though nowadays you might attract undue attention by trying to check one in…also, sit by a hatch, and know how to blow it open when the time comes. Again, good luck.
I ride the SF BART through the tube under the Bay between SF and Oakland. If there’s a quake and the tunnel floods, I’d like some time to try to get out, rather than drown like a rat. How about scuba gear? And some underwater oxyacetylene torch to cut your way out. Hey, this might be a good business to get into!
The elevator, the air in the elevator and you are falling at a very fast rate. Jumping will barely make any difference at all.
Haj
It only works in cartoons.
Let’s see, if you are falling at 110 miles an hour…and you jump up at say 15 miles per hour at just the right moment…then you go splat at 95 miles an hour.
It might not be that simple (I’ve learned that nothing around here is)…but it probably is that simple.
To you, inside the elevator, you are going ‘up’ briefly…but you really are going down still…maybe a little less fast…but even when you jump., you are going down real fast…
Lie on your side with your weight spread out, or look into how parachuters try to survive falls with partially opened or unopened chutes.
I always thought that in a falling elevator a person would be semi-weightless and closer to the ceiling. Then would fall to the floor upon impact.
in theory they would be weightless (relative to the falling car) but in practice, the descent of the car would be slowed a little by friction on the guide rails and air pressure in the shaft; the only way for them to rise to the ceiling would be if the car was falling faster than they were (which shouldn’t happen) or if it was falling unimpeded and they pushed off from the floor.
Thanks Mangetout. I learn something new here every day.
I work as a lobbyist for an engineering society. One of our members went off at a convention about how he hates movies where elevators plummet. He went on and on about how elevators are equipped with huge brakes to prevent such a thing. IANAE, but he seemed to think that the chance of a person dying because and elevator fell to the ground would be very, very low.
“I ride the SF BART through the tube under the Bay between SF and Oakland. If there’s a quake and the tunnel floods, I’d like some time to try to get out, rather than drown like a rat.”
Can I give a :rolleyes: on that? The Transbay Tunnel was designed to deal with earthquakes. It came through the 1989 quake undamaged when that Oakland freeway pancaked so infamously.
I have to take issue with this, Mange. Everyone knows that proper cartoon procedure to surviving a falling elevator is to step out at the last second, not jump.
Dammit! and I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for them pesky kids.
Can I give a :whoosh: on that?
This has nothing to do with the OP, but some smart alecks (yeah, guys from my department) started jumping in the elevator in this building just to be guys, I guess, and the earthquake alarm was set off and they got stuck between floors.
They had to make the call and were met at the next floor by the elevator police. 
Just a bunch of fun-loving 30-40 year old kids. :rolleyes:
To add to Philo’s hijack, the same thing happened to me. My idiot friend/co-worker thought it would be fun to jump up and down just before the elevator reached the ground level. We wound up being stuck for 45 minutes. After that, I always took the stairs if I saw him waiting for one.
Has no one here studied physics? Read a Popular Science article about ballistics? Watched things that go up come down?
Let’s say you and your elevator are falling at about 45 feet/second (terminal veleocity at the end of a very long fall). Let’s also say you’re athletic enough to jump 15 feet, and the elevator is tall enough for you to do so unimpeded. Let’s additionally suppose that this difference in speed would save you.
One second before impact, you jump, travel your 15 feet (relative to the elevator), and watch the elevator crash to the ground. You are now fifteen feet above the ground, at the top of your curve, and motionless with respect to the formerly falling elevator! Traveling at 45 feet/second, and picking up speed.
It’s basic ballistics, kids; what goes up must come down, at exactly the same speed (leaving out air resistance).
Before you get condescending, don’t do it with an example that is so specific to your design that to be condescending means that we all had to consider your design in advance. Hope that makes no sense.
For example, if the OP layed out the scenario you layed out, then you could get condescending…but YOU laid out the scenario to fit your ballistics example, so hold off on the high-and-mighty attitude.
“You people are ignorant…when you consider things .this way.” Well, that’s swell, but we weren’t using that example, so it’s moot.
If you were being funny, then pardon me. Otherwise, I refer to the above.
I’ve never seen a glass-bottomed elevator. I think we’ve established that jumping wouldn’t help, but even if jumping up at the last second could save you, how could you know when to jump?
There was a thread about this shortly after I joined the boards. Here is one of my favorite posts. From If a lift is falling to the ground, the answer to If a lift is falling to the ground and the person inside jumps in the air just before it crashes at the bottom, would the person inside be hurt or not?
Disclaimer: I don’t recomend trying this out, I wouldn’t want anyone to get splinters from the shattered plywood.