Can the surface tension in water kill?

Question

If a person is freefalling from an insane height, lets say 4000 feet. When landing into water (maybe the middle of the ocean), is the surface tension powerful enough to kill?

Answer 1

Yes. For a human being, a fall greater than approximately 80 feet is enough to kill.

Answer 2

On MythBusters, they tried, using a stunt dummy, to see if breaking the surface tension of water slightly before impact made a difference.

From accelerometers placed on the dummy, obviously the dummy experienced less force when the surface tension was broken versus when it wasn't. Did it really make any difference? Considering the amount of damage that the dummy took in either case, obviously not. Like the first guy said, it is the hydrodynamic pressure of water that does most of the damage, not the surface tension alone (which adds only a little amount of extra force).

Answer 3

At high speeds the surface tension of water acts like a solid. Splat not splash.

Answer 4

Water ceases to be soft at around 60 mph. "Mythbusters" Season 1, episode 5, first aired Friday 24 October 2003.

If you are making silica aerogel it will kill your product by crushing its immense internal surface area with capillary action. Your choices are to either render the aerogel hydrophobic by solution silanization or dry without meniscus formation (e.g, critical point drying).

Take two clean (right out of the package) microscpe slides, immerse in distilled water, line them up, and squeeze them together. Surface tension rules! Does anything change if you then wet one corner of the sandwich with soap or detergent? Alcohol or acetone?

Answer 5

Gee Whiz. Common sense. People jump off the Golden Gate Bridge all the time and commit suicide. That's only (huh, only) 220 feet. Where have you been?

I think it would be a bit too morbid to try and figure at what height death is certain, but I have also heard of people being hydraulically knocked unconscious from falls of less than 100 feet.

Answer 6

not the surface tension, just the fact that the water can't get out of the way fast enough which is due to hydrogen bonding and other factors (water having mass)

Answer 7

It's not surface tension that kills.
It's hydrodynamic pressure of water that kills.

Water has density and must acclerate to
make way for your body entering the water,
which takes a LOT of pressure.

Answer 8

yes any height that allows a human body to reach it's terminal velocity makes most materials like water behave like a solid, so to answer your question, hilling the water from 4000 ft is like skydiving on to solid concrete.