Suppose you are on an elevator on the 16th floor of a building?

Question

Suppose you are on an elevator on the 16th floor of a building, when the cable breaks. As you plummet toward the ground, you recall that you once heard that by jumping up fast at the instant of impact, you can escape death. You also recall that the floors are twelve feet apart and that the acceleration of a falling object is 32 feet per second squared. When should you jump?

Answer 1

all of the previous answers must be from english majors who never took basic engineering.  the elevator shaft does not bottom out at the botttom floor, it would fall into the subfloor and into the basement area.  also, there are emergency breaks on the elevator to stop it from falling

Answer 2

hum i dont know but i wouldnt jump. lolz i would be way to scared to i would lay on the ground flat  random guess 4th floor

Answer 3

I suppose I would jump 3 seconds after starting to fall. but i would still die

Answer 4

It wouldn't matter. While this might be a great math problem, it a realistic situation, jumping right before the elevator hits the gound wouldn't solve a thing.

The force of the impact is felt on the body the same as if you were laying on the floor of the elevator at the moment the elevator hit the ground below.

Mythbusters actually disproved this myth a few seasons back.

Answer 5

the total height of the fall = acceleration * time squared

the answer is 2.44948974 seconds. you would die anyways though.

Answer 6

You would still reach terminal velocity at that height, so no point in jumping.

Answer 7

All of these answers are wrong, none of them take into account air resistance. there are also a minimum of two brakes that would have to fail.

And why do people think terminal velocity is a velocity at which you will die.

Answer 8

Doesn't really matter when to jump because you'll be squashed anyway.  Your jump would essentially have to be equal and opposite in magnitude to a falling elevator.

Answer 9

by the time im done figuring out this one, id be dead anyway, but the correct answer is the square root of 6, or about 2.23 seconds. sorry no calculator handy!