if a person fell onto like 10 feet of snow, how far could they fall and still have it break the fall. out of a plane? prolly not. off a high cliff? yep. how high a cliff? if i could find out the normal force of the upper layers of the snow i could calculate different scenarios.

12/29/2009 1:59:17 AM

the plane will take off

12/29/2009 2:00:21 AM

DIAF

12/29/2009 2:00:32 AM

WHAT MYTH IS THIS???

12/29/2009 2:01:49 AM

does snow land on a treadmill? or will it always just fall off?

12/29/2009 2:02:45 AM

Does it explode?

12/29/2009 2:04:11 AM

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!

12/29/2009 2:04:43 AM

"she's" inquiring as to the deceleration effects of loose snow on a human object.

12/29/2009 2:08:02 AM

WHAT MYTH IS THIS???

12/29/2009 2:09:04 AM

Quote :

"WHAT MYTH IS THIS???"

12/29/2009 2:09:56 AM

THE MYTH WHERE I DROP MAMBAGRL OFF A CLIFF TO KILL HER BUT SHE LANDS IN A PILE OF SNOW AND DOESN'T DIE AND GOES TO THE POLICE WITH HER STORY.




fuck

12/29/2009 2:13:06 AM

Epic Fail!

12/29/2009 2:25:12 AM

Quote :

"out of a plane? prolly not."

really?? you dont say!

12/29/2009 3:07:25 AM

The myth where you drop mambragrl off a cliff but you can't actually do that because it's an alias

12/29/2009 3:58:10 AM

Quote :

"In 1942 a Soviet pilot named I. M. Chisov plunged 22,000 feet without a parachute after bailing out of his Ilyushin 4 bomber. German pilots had attacked Chisov’s plane, and he didn’t open his chute because he was afraid it would allow his attackers to find him. He landed on a snow-covered slope and rolled downhill, badly hurt and unconscious—but alive. According to aero­dynamics experts, a skydiver without a chute reaches a terminal velocity of about 120 miles per hour after dropping roughly 500 feet. That actually isn’t any faster than the speed you’d reach if you fell from a moderately tall building. “But it’s not falling that kills you; it’s the landing,” Richard says: The abrupt pressure of an impact is likely to break open blood vessels such as your aorta, damage internal organs, and shatter your bones. The worst thing to hit is a hard surface that brings you to a halt almost instantly. If you land on snow (like Chisov) or hit something that gives way, such as a skylight (as happened to U.S. Air Force Sergeant Alan Magee, who survived a 20,000-foot drop into a French train station in 1943), you will suffer less damage. In such a situation, it is the ability of the bones of your skull and spine to withstand the impact that can potentially preserve your life, according to a report conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration."

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/the-body/05-how-to-fall-out-of-a-plane-and-live

12/29/2009 4:34:50 AM

As ^ said, you can be a lucky son of a bitch and live with from a free fall at terminal velocity. Just requires that 10/10 landing though.

12/29/2009 4:41:05 AM

how about you send it to mythbusters yourself?

12/29/2009 8:10:18 AM

^^^that doesn't totally answer the question b/c that Soviet pilot landed on a slope. Since he wasn't landing on a flat surface the impact force is significantly less.

12/29/2009 9:19:32 AM

If they did this one, the slope would probably be a variable they would test.

12/29/2009 9:24:05 AM

when I was a kid on vacation in Vermont during the winter there was enough snow on the ground to jump off the rooftops into it.


good times!

12/29/2009 9:27:26 AM

This myth actually sounds more interesting than half the stuff thats on the show.

12/29/2009 9:34:12 AM

You mean the half that isn't girls and explosions?

12/29/2009 9:35:48 AM

i want to know if 2 gray hairs will grow back if you pluck one

12/29/2009 9:42:35 AM

Quote :

"how about you send it to mythbusters yourself?"

because mambagrl doesn't actually exist outside TWW

12/29/2009 11:23:48 AM

Quote :

"DAT 10/10 LANDING"

12/29/2009 11:28:16 AM

^^^interesting myth

12/29/2009 11:33:58 AM

As for falling into snow...

If we ignore any force the snow itself may inflict upon you and just treat snow as a linear deceleration medium the whole problem becomes a matter of how much G-force the human body can withstand.

a(t) = g (the acceleration from snow deceleration)
v(t) = gt (velocity formula)
s(t) =  0.5gt^2 (position formula)

snow_depth = 0.5gt^2
impact_velocity = gt
deceleration_time = snow_depth/(0.5*impact_velocity)
acceleration_force = g = impact_velocity/deceleration_time
g-force = acceleration_force/9.8

all units SI

example:
impact_velocity = 80 m/s (near maximum human terminal velocity)
snow_depth = 3 m

deceleration_time = 3/(0.5*80) = 0.075 s
acceleration_force = 80/0.075 = 1066.67 m/s^2
g-force = 1066.67/9.8 = 108.8 multiples of earth's gravity

12/29/2009 11:43:28 AM

12/29/2009 11:45:36 AM

^^ You shut up with your math. You and your smart math...

12/29/2009 11:47:32 AM

YOU AND YOUR DAMN MATH

12/29/2009 11:50:48 AM

^, ^^ some of us don't like to guess when jumping off things

12/29/2009 11:52:05 AM

I DON'T GUESS I JUST KNOW, K

12/29/2009 11:53:36 AM

Well it depends on how long the g-force is applied to the body. The human body can withstand brief instances of 100g for instance. Many race car drivers have experienced such forces in accidents and survived.

12/29/2009 11:59:01 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg-zjgWqFkE&feature=related

This guy accidentally skied off a 350' cliff and ended up ok. (fast forward to the 2:00 mark to skip a lot of the talking.)

[Edited on December 29, 2009 at 12:12 PM. Reason : l]

12/29/2009 12:12:14 PM

holy shit

12/29/2009 12:39:23 PM

THEN WHO WAS PLANE?

12/29/2009 12:40:02 PM

Not too high, seems like it would hurt tho.

http://www.break.com/index/snowboarder-faceplant-off-ski-lift.html

12/29/2009 1:26:43 PM

The skiier falling off that cliff was insane...

12/29/2009 1:47:21 PM

send this to mythbusters: mambagrl is actually female

12/29/2009 1:49:48 PM

the myth that if you put kobe bryant in a room full of women in colorado, that not one of them will be raped.

12/29/2009 5:08:44 PM

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/30/mythbusters-regular-erik-gates-dead/

didn't use enough snow

12/30/2009 11:23:29 PM

One of the mythbusters just died this week after falling 30 feet.

12/30/2009 11:26:53 PM

the plane doesn't take off

12/30/2009 11:29:02 PM

basically how many G forces can the body withstand and still survive. therefore, what would be the coefficient of snow to G force reduction as depth increased. and finally you would have how deep the snow would have to be to still save your life at 120 mph on impact. or you could simply state how quickly or how slowly it would have to bring the body to a stop without killing the person,

i remember seeing something about a jet pilot who survived 25 Gs when he crashed his F18 on the runway. shattered his legs and broke his back and basically took him to deaths door but he lived.
i dont know if thats still the most anyone has ever lived through

12/30/2009 11:59:24 PM

^I remember watching a tv show about pilots and G-forces, and I believe it stated that the highest ever srvived was in the 30s....i'll try to google it and see...

12/31/2009 12:12:24 AM

http://www.ejectionsite.com/stapp.htm

apparently he survived 46.2 Gs for a time of less than a second, and 25 Gs for over a second.

It says that 25 Gs is the equivalent of striking a solid brick wall with your car at 120 miles per hour, but that only lasts ~.1 seconds

12/31/2009 12:22:35 AM

bwn, mambagrl? If you are real...

12/31/2009 12:26:15 AM

^^^, ^^ the human capacity for withstanding "g's" varies depending on which axis it's applied in (i.e., the x, y, or z axis.).



I don't know if this part is true, but I've heard that on one of the most aggressive profiles (well, probably THE most aggressive profile, the one after which they stopped), his eyes partially dislodged from their sockets, retained only by the optic nerve which tethered them, haha.

[Edited on December 31, 2009 at 6:23 AM. Reason : ]

12/31/2009 6:23:20 AM

Quote :

"f you land on snow (like Chisov) or hit something that gives way, such as a skylight (as happened to U.S. Air Force Sergeant Alan Magee, who survived a 20,000-foot drop into a French train station in 1943), you will suffer less damage."

Quote :

"Erik Gates, who contributed to the popular Discovery Channel show "MythBusters" as its "Amateur Rocket Expert," has died. He was 47. According to media reports, Gates died in a freak accident. He was at a building in Newbury Park, California, doing electrical work on a roof, when he fell 30 feet from a skylight."

12/31/2009 6:32:23 AM

^lol



gtherman, are you going out of your way to ignore what I already posted?

Quote :

"Well it depends on how long the g-force is applied to the body. The human body can withstand brief instances of 100g for instance. Many race car drivers have experienced such forces in accidents and survived."

12/31/2009 9:46:17 AM