Again in January, a fully intact iPhone was discovered alongside the facet of the street after plummeting 16,000 ft when a door blew off an Alaska Airways flight. On the time, we identified that it was fairly unbelievable the iPhone 14 Professional Max survived such a dramatic fall.
The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern, nevertheless, was decided to get extra solutions.
As a refresher, the iPhone 14 Professional Max that plummeted 16,000 ft from the Alaska Airways flight had a case on it and landed on the grass.
Joanna carried out a sequence of drop checks utilizing an iPhone 14 and a Samsung Galaxy S23. The outcomes diverse between totally different checks, however the important thing take a look at was dropping each telephones from 300 ft excessive, with out circumstances, onto a grassy space.
The results of Joanna’s 300-foot drop onto grass? Each telephones “sustained no actual harm” aside from some filth and grass grime.
Joanna got down to get an evidence, speaking to a number of specialists for a little bit of a science lesson. Why can an iPhone survive a drop from a airplane, however not from a toilet counter?
“It doesn’t matter for those who drop the telephone from 300 ft up or from house,” mentioned Mark Rober, a former NASA mechanical engineer turned YouTuber. “It’s going to be the identical end result due to one thing referred to as terminal velocity.”
I referred to as Rhett Allain, an affiliate professor of physics at Southeastern Louisiana College. He defined that, due to the mass, measurement and form of a smartphone, it should improve in pace till it hits about 60 miles an hour. At that time, air resistance retains it from getting any sooner.
He assured me that 300 ft within the air was sufficient peak for all of those units, with and with out circumstances, to succeed in their terminal velocities.
There’s one other physics idea to consider: deceleration, generally referred to as “smashing into one thing.” Rober and Allain defined that grass cushions the falling object, permitting for slower deceleration. Tougher surfaces like asphalt—or your toilet tiles—trigger a way more abrupt deceleration.
You possibly can watch Joanna’s full video beneath. It’s a very good one! Try her full publish on the WSJ’s website.
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