Does Anyone Know A Website That Shows How Much Force A Person Hitting The Water at 30 mph experiences...?

Question

Me and some friends were out on the River yesterday and we rode on a float. It was pulled by a Jet Ski. The float would flip over sometimes and the Jet Ski would maybe be doing 30 to 40 mph...and we hit the water and would flip. Pretty rough impact! Sometimes they Jet Ski would go in circle at about 10 mph but the outward force on the float made it hard to hang on without being thrown off the side, when we were finally thrown the impact was just as rough it seemed. Does anyone know any Website that compare maybe falling off a building to hitting the water and a certain mph, or perhaps a chart. Thanks.

I wish there was something that said, if a 185 lb guy hits the water at 35 mph it is = to falling off a 10 storied building

Answer 1

From a 'physics' approach, hitting the water or hitting a sponge has no difference at the moment of impact. The way that the force is dissipated may be what you mean.

For that actual force, however, its just a matter of the mass of the object at a certain speed applied to the surface area that it will impact at that instant. Thus, a 200 llb man, hitting a flat surface with his whole body will apply less force then if he just impacts with his knee or elbow (same force, different surface are). So... faceplants are going to hurt a lot more then back slides....

as far as circling goes, the boat may be going 10 mph but that is near the center of the circle it is making. The skier, is on a larger circle and must therefor be going faster to maintain the same distance from the boat.
If a boat is making a circle with a 50 foot radius it is doing 315 feet more or less per revolution.

If the skier is 20 outside of the boat he is going 440 feet per revolution or almost 40% faster then the boat!