Non-Protected Camera Survives 100,000ft Fall

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I know this video is about some case that protected an iPad during a 100,000 ft fall but...what about the camera with no protection that filmed the whole thing? I'll take two of those please. Best unintentional camera advertisement ever. :D
 
The iPad plus all the other stuff attached to it can't weigh that much. It reaches terminal velocity at a much slower speed compared to say a person because of this lower mass. Therefore it can't fall as fast as you think it is. You can drop an any off the top of a skyscraper and it will just wall away at the bottom. Cool camera footage though.
 
Makes me proud to have received a GoPro Hero2 for Christmas. Awesome little camera.
 
The iPad plus all the other stuff attached to it can't weigh that much. It reaches terminal velocity at a much slower speed compared to say a person because of this lower mass
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I don't know if a person or an iPad would have a lower terminal velocity, but I know that it doesn't have anything to do with weight or mass - the effect of gravity on either an iPad or a person (or any object that's small relative to the size of the Earth) is exactally the same. In other words, two otherwise identical objects that weigh different amounts dropped from the same height would hit the ground at exactally the same time.

For more info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_acceleration
 
Pretty awesome how on the fall you can actually hear the atmosphere getting thicker as the wind noise increases
 
FndTheRver said:
The iPad plus all the other stuff attached to it can't weigh that much. It reaches terminal velocity at a much slower speed compared to say a person because of this lower mass. Therefore it can't fall as fast as you think it is. You can drop an any off the top of a skyscraper and it will just wall away at the bottom. Cool camera footage though.
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nice. basic science from 400 years ago fail.
 
andocser said:
I don't know if a person or an iPad would have a lower terminal velocity, but I know that it doesn't have anything to do with weight or mass - the effect of gravity on either an iPad or a person (or any object that's small relative to the size of the Earth) is exactally the same. In other words, two otherwise identical objects that weigh different amounts dropped from the same height would hit the ground at exactally the same time.

For more info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_acceleration
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In a vacuum, yes. In air? No. Practically, it has to do with the amount of air resistance versus the acceleration of gravity and its mass. Otherwise, parachutes would be absolutely useless. The amount of air resistance you need to slow your decent is related to the amount of mass that gravity is acting upon. A person needs one parachute, for instance, while when they drop jeeps from an aircraft they usually attach 2-3 parachutes or larger parachutes, or both.

If you're going to talk about the science of it all, talk about all the science. ;)

So, yes theoretically an iPad could have a lower terminal velocity than a person. But, an iPad will tumble during the fall so its flat surface isn't consistently slowing it down. A human used to free-fall would know how to adjust their body to maximize air resistance. So, despite a big cross-sectional area for its weight the iPad could practically end up hitting the ground sooner than the human. One would have to do the math to figure it out and that sort of math is a sketchy thing involving all sorts of things I won't even fathom to be capable of calculating. Rate of tumble alone is probably a bit of voodoo science.
 
The extra camera, tracking pod and shredded balloon added even more drag, further reducing terminal velocity. Terminal velocity is the rate of descent where drag and gravitation acceleration balance out.

The same experiment could have been done in a couple of hundred feet rather than 100,000, not that the footage would have been nearly as cool.
 
it's still obviously going pretty quick, but it doesn't take it that long to stabalize and fall relatively flat in an orientation that allows maximum drag. Screen facing up presenting the full serface area of the back of the device towards the ground. I don't know what an ipads mass is, but it's cross sectional area is probably proportionally very large vs it's mass compared to a person. It was still probably going a good 80-100 mph.

I bet if it fell edgewise it wouldn't have survived.
 
vertices said:
Makes me proud to have received a GoPro Hero2 for Christmas. Awesome little camera.
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That's what I got our 12-year-old daughter as well, with the chest, wrist and bike helmet strap. She loves the thing. It seems nothing can break the clear container it's kept in.

It was a pain to teach her to use it though, but fortunately her excitement made her an attentive student. After a couple times she got the knack of it.

The video quality is superb at 1080p.
 
IMO these demonstrations would be cooler if they shot the iPad from a cannon or something instead of dropping it from a weather balloon. The only cool thing about dropping it from a weather balloon is the view, but it's hard to enjoy that with the iPad spinning around so fast during it's descent.
 
Yeah, the helicopter like auto rotation the thing was undergoing helped a lot.

To impress me: get rid of the bar and camera, let it fall without the rotation...
 
wow the guy who replied early on -- needs some serious physics lessons.

(not in a vacuum) Drop a sheet of paper and a sheet of paper smashed up into a ball from the top of a building.... which one hits the ground first?

I weep for the education system in this country.
 
I'd rather see a video of a 5 year old on a sugar high that's mad at it in a playgroud.
 
collegeboy69us said:
wow the guy who replied early on -- needs some serious physics lessons.

(not in a vacuum) Drop a sheet of paper and a sheet of paper smashed up into a ball from the top of a building.... which one hits the ground first?

I weep for the education system in this country.
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The theoretical physics is correct (in a vacuum, or whatever......F=ma)
Correctly put however, there are other forces at work in the real situation.

On the other hand, the video was cool, and I want one of those cameras......shit, my wife could fuck up that iPad just dropping it off the kitchen counter, fancy wrapper or not.....:eek:
 
wow the guy who replied early on -- needs some serious physics lessons.
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Were you referring to me?

I said "...two otherwise identical objects that weigh different amounts dropped from the same height would hit the ground at exactally the same time." Vaccum or not, I stand by that statement.

If two objects have different levels of air resistance (like a flat sheet of paper vs. a crumpled sheet of paper) they're no longer "otherwise identical".

I think your point is that air resistance makes all the difference in terms of determining what an objects terminal velocity will be and I agree with you, but that doesn't contradict anything I said.
 
Good to know a baloon filled with lead will fall exactly the same "Vaccum or not," as one filled with helium.
 
ekuest said:
nice. basic science from 400 years ago fail.
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No. As a skydiver speaking from experience, that only holds true in a vacuum. Two skydivers of similar build, one weighing 200 lbs will fail faster, i.e. a terminal velocity of 125 mph than a the skydiver who weighs 170 lbs. That's why some folks wear weight vests for team skydiving- to minimize the speed differential.
 
The camera is possibly a Hero HD. Fairly cheap, rugged and has good quality output. I remember doing freefall videography when you had to wear a helmet mounted cam and chest mounted full sized VCR. Ugh.

I have footage of my camera committing suicide coming off my head and tumbling 2000 feet. It did *not* survive...neither did the the Minolta XG body, the 28mm lens did.
 
bh192012 said:
Good to know a baloon filled with lead will fall exactly the same "Vaccum or not," as one filled with helium.
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Ah but here you are no longer talking about mass. Helium has a lower DENSITY than air, and thus will tend to rise above air, which is why balloons float.

However, fill one container with lead, or uranium, fill another with an equal MASS of say water, and as long as the dimensions of the two balloons are equal, they will reach the same terminal velocity.

Ah the wonders of having taken high school level physics...
 
Vt = sqrt (2 * mass * gravity acceleration / air density * surface area * drag coefficient)

Of course this doesn't take into account buoyancy... IE helium balloons.
 
i just looked up terminal velocity i am sure that thing wasnt too aerodynamic and only fell at around 60-90mph

they should of said how fast it came down to earth or something. I bet if they took a car and drove 240mph on the german test track and threw it out the window without all that stupid gear attached it would of broke
 
Would have been cool if they had an accelerometer data dump with time, esp at impact.
 
andocser said:
I said "...two otherwise identical objects that weigh different amounts dropped from the same height would hit the ground at exactally the same time." Vaccum or not, I stand by that statement.
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You are incorrect. The basic effect of air resistance on a solid body is a function of volumetric density, not of weight, assuming the solid body is heavier than air. Normally that is assumed, but in physics it must be defined precisely. A feather cast from steel will fall much faster than a real feather because it is denser, even if every other physical characteristic is identical. This is also why the sheet of paper can be folded into an airplane that will glide but crumple it into a ball and it will drop to the ground. The ball is denser, even though it is the exact same mass as the plane, because the mass is concentrated into a smaller volume.
 
Is this the real commercial?

1) The ipad seems to be running but then he turns it off right before sending it up?
2) The fall is cut into a few pieces, with the last cut being 3ft off the ground
3) They proclaim it is still running, but the opening Disney and pixar credits are whats showing, as though it was just turned on
 
KranZ said:
No one else noticed a gap in the fall @ 1:37?
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You didn't notice the ENTIRE video was full of jump cuts and that the footage you saw was not real time at all?
 
Ididar said:
So, yes theoretically an iPad could have a lower terminal velocity than a person. But, an iPad will tumble during the fall so its flat surface isn't consistently slowing it down. A human used to free-fall would know how to adjust their body to maximize air resistance. So, despite a big cross-sectional area for its weight the iPad could practically end up hitting the ground sooner than the human. One would have to do the math to figure it out and that sort of math is a sketchy thing involving all sorts of things I won't even fathom to be capable of calculating. Rate of tumble alone is probably a bit of voodoo science.
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Curved shape of the iPad would likely influence which side it favors. What i don't know is if the wedged shaped edge will cause it slice at curving an angle face up. Or if there's enough for an airfoil effect to make it go face down.

On the video tho, it was pretty much face up the whole way down. Would it have survived if the GPS tracker was attached at the front or side?

@Phoenix
He's probably thinking of the experiment about weights being thrown off the side of the tower. May have been cutting edge at the time, but i don't think they'd land at the same time if it was thrown from much higher.




This reminds me of the iPhone4 physics arguments a while back when the glass broke after they dropped an empty case and people kept insisting that a fully functional iphone (more mass) would actually keep the glass from breaking :eek:
 
UnrealCpu said:
i just looked up terminal velocity i am sure that thing wasnt too aerodynamic and only fell at around 60-90mph

they should of said how fast it came down to earth or something. I bet if they took a car and drove 240mph on the german test track and threw it out the window without all that stupid gear attached it would of broke
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I'm pretty sure just about anything would break going 240 mph or at least be extremely pliable.
 
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