What would happen if you drop an ant off the empire state building?

Question

Would the air pressure break him apart? Would he catch onto the side of the building and climb back up? Would he float away with the wind? I know it's random.

Answer 1

  It would die.

Answer 2

The ant would live.

It would die if there is no air resistance. It would reach velocity of about 88 m/s from a Empire State's height of about 400 m.

V^2- 0^2 = 2(9.8)(400)

V = 88 m/s

If air resistance is present, terminal velocity is reached.

At terminal speed, air resistance balances weight. terminal velocity is affected by the weight of the object and the surface area of the object. Also, by the density and viscosity of the fluid.

C ρ A v^2 = mg

v = sqrt(mg / (C ρ A))

for man v = 120 miles per hour, while for an ant is less than 2 m/s.

This speed is achieved after only 0.7 seconds of fall. Therfore, it will just be gliding in air for about 200 seconds and land slowly at the same speed of about 2 m/s.

Answer 3

Interesting question!

A falling human reaches a maximum speed of about 180mph.  So the ant would probably also reach some max speed.  They're tough little guys...they can carry several times their own body weight.  I bet it would live, but that's just a guess.

Answer 4

If you pulled the wings off a fly you would have the same thing yes?

a small bug,now go check out you car wind shield.

Answer 5

That's a good question to test the uncertainty principle.

If you put an "ant-cam" on him and dropped him, the cam would cause him to fall faster and surely die, but if you don't put the cam on him, you'll lose  sight of him and not be able to tell. The process of measuring the outcome, changes the outcome.

So the ant lives, raises a family in Manhattan, and has lunch in Central Park every week where the picnics are there for the raiding.

Answer 6

A bug splattering on a windshield is not a good analogy, the ant would not reach a speed high enough to cause fatal injuries in a fall from a high building, it would, more or less, float down and be carried by air currents. It would survive.  

Answer 7

He'd blow around till he caught onto something.

Because the ant is so small and weighs next to nothing, he wouldn't fall as fast as a person.  Air pressure would hold him up.

That's why the penny dropped off the said same building wouldn't kill someone on the ground.  It wouldn't be able to get going fast enough due to air pressure.

Answer 8

It is likely that the ant, if it survived the shock of being dropped from 102 stories up and wasn't carried away on a breeze, would actually survive the impact with the concrete below. This is because the mass of the ant is so small the force resulting from the blow would also be very, very small.