English Deutsch Français Italiano Español Português 繁體中文 Bahasa Indonesia Tiếng Việt ภาษาไทย
All categories

13 answers

First of all, in the absense of air resistance they will hit at the same time. Acceleration due to gravity is not dependent on the weight of the object being accelerated.

However, because their is air on earth, the two objects will achieve a velocity known as 'terminal velocity' at some point during their fall. Terminal velocity in air is essentially the velocity at which the drag force (upward) is equal to the gravitational force (downward). This occurs because drag force increases with velocity.

So the real question here is 'does the man or the car have a higher terminal velocity?' The problem is that terminal velocity depends strongly on shape and orientation, as you might expect. Therefore, if the car is falling front first and the man is falling on his belly, you might expect the car to hit first since it is build to have low wind resistance from the front and the man is exposing a high surface area. On the other hand, if the man is head first and the car is on its bottom, you might expect the opposite.

Overall though, a rough indicator of which object will have a higher terminal velocity (for two similarly shaped objects) is mass to surface area ratio. The higher the object's mass relative to its surface area, the more quickly it will fall. Since the car is very heavy relative to its surface area compared to the man, I would expect that in most circumstances it would have a higher terminal velocity and would thus hit the ground first.

2006-06-20 08:20:24 · answer #1 · answered by locke9k 2 · 0 0

to sum up all the answers

in a perfect condition, (physict's view), there would be no air resistance. thus there would not be anything that would slow down the acceleration of the two falling objects. and as they fall their potential energy (mass x gravity x height) is being converted into kinetic energy 1/2(mass x velocity x velocity). and at the end the potential must equal the kinetic, thuns mass x gravity x height = 1/2(mass x velocity x velocity). and the mass cancels out leaving velocity = square root (2(gravity x height)). all that to say that in the perfect condition, both would hit the ground at the same time.

but due to air resistance, the car would fall first, as it is the heavier object and has more momentum

2006-06-20 01:39:30 · answer #2 · answered by tj_7889 1 · 0 0

Any thing falling from 5 times heigh above the height of mount everest would of course be be falling free of atmostpheric conditions but once they enter into earths Gravitational pull we know that k= 1/2 mv.v and pot enery= mgh so if car has heavier mass than a person would hit earth first.

2006-06-20 00:12:39 · answer #3 · answered by NIRUPAM S 1 · 0 0

ignoring air resistance the car and the man will hit the ground at the same time but if air resistance wasn't ignored the time of the fall will depend on the area of the surface exposed to the air resistance and the weight of the object.

2006-06-20 01:19:17 · answer #4 · answered by smart guy 2 · 0 0

The more dense an object is, the less it is affected by air resistance. The average density of the whole car (averaging the density of the engine block with less dense parts like a seat) would be much greater that the density of a human.

So the car would land first.

2006-06-20 02:01:43 · answer #5 · answered by ? 3 · 0 0

if you neglect the drag effect of atmosphere, i think they would reach the earth exactly at the same time. because they have the same acceleration and v=a*t meaning after the same time, they'll reach the same speed. and since d=v*t, after same time they get the same distance.

but since the atmospheric drag effects will act, man will reach the earth earlier, since the drag force on the car would be larger. but again, it must be calculated to be sure, and the positions of both car and the man must be determined since the drag force greatly depends on the cross-sectional area perpendicular to the movement direction.

2006-06-20 00:12:02 · answer #6 · answered by orkunbaki 3 · 0 0

The man will most likely hit first because the car has significantly more surface area than the man, and thus is more susceptible to drag.

2006-06-20 00:06:37 · answer #7 · answered by Melvin 4 · 0 0

MAN,because the friction offered to him is less than to the car because of the shape and surface area.

2006-06-20 00:07:38 · answer #8 · answered by sa 7 · 0 0

both of them because the force of gravity in the earths surface does not affect how heavy an object was

2006-06-20 00:43:34 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

The car. The man will have a parachute.

2006-06-20 00:20:50 · answer #10 · answered by Mary E 1 · 0 0

fedest.com, questions and answers