Does a fall from higher up do more damage?

Tell you what. Give these a try and let us all know how it turns out. lol

I would think that after a certain height all bones would be broken/smashed/blasted to pieces. It would also depend if you landed head first, or on your back, or maybe feet first. (Only my two cents....)

I presume that terminal velocity is a factor. Once you're falling as fast as you can possibly fall, a longer fall shouldn't make a difference to the impact.

adktd2bks said:

I'm assuming that a fall from either 100 ft or 500 ft would kill you, but would the higher distance cause more bodily damage? i.e., more broken bones, skull cracked in more places, etc? I'm kind of thinking not because the force pulling you down is the same in both cases, but then again I was never very good at physics.

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It's not the height of the fall that busts you up, it's the sudden stop at the end.

Richard

What parametric said. Falling through air, the human body reaches a maximum velocity at some point (I don't happen to know what that is, but skydivers undoubtedly would), after which it wouldn't matter how far you fell. But, since you asked:

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/JianHuang.shtml

caw

Height is definitely a factor for cats. Past a certain number of stories (7), their survival rate goes up, and number of injuries goes down.

All objects falling through the atmosphere have a terminal velocity. According to Wikipaedia the terminal velocity for a person is 56 m/s. Since objects accellerate 9.8 m/s/s as they fall, it should take approximately 6 seconds to reach a terminal velocity. So in 6 seconds we fall 4.9+14.7+24.3+34.1+44+53.8=175.8m or about 576 feet. So yes, a person falling 500 ft hasn't quite gotten to their terminal velocity. But only barely.

I've read that you can survive a fall from 5 or 6 stories up pretty reasonably (assuming ofc you don't land head first). After that, you'd need a miracle or a good haypile/tree/whatever.

Wouldn't it also depends on the surface they are falling on for the various types of damage you'd find?

adktd2bks said:

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, then someone who fell from 100ft, which only takes about 2.5 seconds is further from reaching terminal velocity and so the impact might not be as bad as someone who jumped from 500ft?

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Yes. Assuming they landed on the same surface, the one from 500 ft would be going faster, thus more damage.

The same model car that hits a bridge abutment at 100 mph is going to sustain more damage than one that hits it at 50. Simple laws of physics.

My last book had someone falling off a cliff. I had to google to find the acceleration formula, then work it out, all for one sentence:

"It takes slightly more than three seconds to fall 150 ft.

A fall of five or six stories? You're kidding, right?

A fall of three times your body height (call it 18 feet) is likely to produce serious injuries.

'pretty reasonably' may have been too strong a phrase. But it does happen. Didn't say you wouldn't have serious injuries, just that you might survive.

Well while it is true that terminal velocity exists for everything, it's also dependent on the aerodynamic drag of whatever is falling. For example, a parachute my have a terminal velocity of like 10 mph, where as a sleek 2000lb bomb might come down at supersonic speeds.

It all depends, and contrary to popular belief a person can fall significantly faster than 120 mph IF they change their aerodynamic profile(e.g. tuck their arms to their sides, and make themselves like a dart).

James D. Macdonald said:

A fall of three times your body height (call it 18 feet) is likely to produce serious injuries.

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My uncle recently fell off a chair (standing on it to sand the roof of his car) and broke 5 ribs. All depends on the technique of the fall, I guess, plus other factors such as age, health, etc.

adktd2bks said:

This is all being kind of nitpicky I suppose. The reason I ask is that I have a situation where two people are standing outside a ten story window (about 100ft) and one says to the other that he had originally planned to jump from the fiftieth floor because it does more physical damage. Would him saying this make sense or would it be totally bogus?

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It wouldn't be bogus if the character believed that. Just the same as all those suicidal people who watch movies and believe the fastest way to end their life is to cut themselves horizontally across the wrists. Grim example, but it seems to fit your scenario.
Does it really matter if the character's logic is flawed? Should he know all the facts about terminal velocity (or whatever it's called)? Is he a skydiver? If he should know, and he doesn't, you have reason to worry. If he's just an average joe who left school in 6th grade, I don't think the reader will mind if he's got his calculations a little stuffed up. ^_^

And that's my nonsensical rambling quota for the day.

The trick to committing suicide by jumping is to do one simple thing.

Go head first.

LD50 for a person falling is 50 feet, meaning 50% of people falling 50 feet will die as a result.

omg, they did an LD50 for this?

They did!

> The median lethal dose (LD50) for falls is 4 stories, or 48
> ft, and the
> lethal does for 90% of test subjects (LD90) is 7 stories, or 84 ft.
> Reference: Rosen P, ed. Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical
> Practice. 4th ed. Mosby-Year Book, Inc; 1998:352.

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That is good to know.

They didn't say that the 10% that survived the 7 story fall, all looked like ET afterward.

James D. Macdonald said:

Q. How many writers does it take to change a lightbulb? A. Two. One to screw it most of the way in, and one to supply the final suprise twist.

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Ten. One to screw it in, and nine to say, "I could have done that."

adktd2bks said:

I'm assuming that a fall from either 100 ft or 500 ft would kill you, but would the higher distance cause more bodily damage? i.e., more broken bones, skull cracked in more places, etc? I'm kind of thinking not because the force pulling you down is the same in both cases, but then again I was never very good at physics.

Click to expand...

Terminal velocity for a human is about 100mph. After that, you don't see more damage regardless of the distance.

You reach TV after about 300 feet of falling, so yes, there would be more damage at 500 feet.

In either case, there's a lot of bone fracture and internal organs are ruptured, skin splits, as can the abdominal wall, skull opens ... they are gory messes.

hmm... good question.

There are several dynamics to falling from a set amount of height. The higher, and this is ironic, the better chances of survival - to an extent.

Compare, if you will, a three floor fall to a 6 floor fall. It's been proven from accident statistics that the 6 floor fall is survivable more so than that of a three floor fall because of velocity, impact placement and spreading of impact throughout the body.

The human body is a strange creature indeed, it's amazing how much torture and impact it actually can spread across the frame of both skeletal and muscular persuasion. For instance, take hitting water at a 3 floor height compared to soil...water is like concrete at that height, you can break bones with water more so than you would with soil.

The dispersement of the impact depends on the landing position as well - flat on back, side or stomach? Flat on back with hands and feet spread out is actually safer than side or stomach, especially with the chin tucked forward to prevent the head from slamming on the ground.

It seems, from studies I've seen, that most falls recorded end up with a back landing and on soil or grass rather than concrete or water. I've also seen it said that if you land in water feet first you are likely to shatter shin bones and possibly not so much walk away without multiple fractures of the legs and hips - again water is like concrete theory at play here again.

There's also the other side of the equation - higher falls such as 10 and 12 floor falls can cause internal organ implosions resulting in nearly immediate death through organ failure and internal bleeding. Either way, falls of any height higher than 1 to 2 floors would result in a need for medical attention of the immediate kind.