Freefall

Ok, time to go back to school.

From what height must an average person jump off of to free fall for 3 seconds?
Lets make the person 70 kg and he is falling in a mostly upright position.

Galileo Galilei demonstrated that a body takes exactly 3 seconds to fall from the tower of Pisa, irrespective of the pope’s weight.

Too much information there, I think. Would a Newtonian dynamicist qualify as an “average person,” even in a vacuum? ::slight_smile:

ETA: “The Pope?” Ratzi weighs a lot more than 70kg.

'Luthon64

In a vacuum thin popes fall at the same speed as fat popes.

…which does not imply that the vacuum in a freefalling pope condones condomes.

44m. Hurts, huh?

Mintaka

I like it! It sounds so profound, almost Zen.

Duh, youse ous just don’t geddit. A pope’s in-fall-ible… 8)

LOL. This thread is just getting better and better!

You know, if popes could function as anti-gravity devices I could really some potential uses for them.

Yes, s = ½·a·t² solves it with a = g = 9.81m/s². Still, somehow I had the idea, this being posted under “Fun,” that everything but the correct answer was called for. Now, seeing as the pope usually looks like he’s in drag, what would the height be if we use a vertically fallible pope and consider air drag? Direct experimentation with popes is not permitted.

'Luthon64

;D

What about an archbishop?

(My apologies for being so banal and unimaginative in the fun section. Although solving the problem was fun in itself. :smiley: Promise to rejoin the banter the moment I can think of a suitable papal-newtonian response. ;))

Mintaka

Only if you don’t care about the accuracy of the answers. Anyway, if you pushed one of them off some height, he would immediately become an “arc-bishop” because it is impossible for clerics of that rank to follow a straight line, physically or metaphorically…

'Luthon64

What a pity. Scraps of papal pulp could make quite a souvenir.

What about trajectory measurements of a cannon-ized pope? Must we use smoothbores or are rifles OK?

I guess a rifled barrel would give a papal bull-et some extra spin.