Throwing Cats Out of Airplanes
Here’s a fun question! What will happen to a cat if you throw it out of an airplane?
Are you ready for the answer? …In fact, nothing will happen to the cat! Because if something WERE to happen to the cat, you would get killed by rain! (Wait, what?)
Okay, okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me backtrack a little bit…
Why rain doesn’t kill you
Rain clouds are anywhere from 2 kilometres up. If you still remember anything from high school classes, the acceleration under gravity is roughly 9.8 m/s^2, and the distance traveled 1/2at^2. Without bothering you with the calculation details, a raindrop from even your lowest 2 km cloud would be falling at 197 m/s by the time it hits your head, according to those equations. In other words, fast enough for the rain to knock you unconscious :p
And yet it doesn’t. In fact, raindrops hit you at just 2 to 9 m/s, depending on the size. Why? Because of air resistance!
The raindrop starts at rest. There’s no air resistance, so it starts falling. And as it falls faster and faster, the air resistance increases, until it exactly balances the acceleration due to gravity. At that point, the raindrop just continues falling at a constant speed, which we call the terminal velocity.
(image courtesy of Institute of Physics)
A human’s terminal velocity is around 200 km/h. That’s fast enough for you to make a nice wet splat noise when you hit the ground (or so I gather from Saturday morning cartoons). And even if you don’t make a splat noise, you still wouldn’t want to hit the ground at that speed. Which is why we use parachutes.
And now back to cats!
So what does all this have to do with throwing cats out of airplanes?
Cats have great skills at landing on all 4 feet. In fact, unless you drop them from 5 cm above the ground with a lead weight chained to their back, they WILL probably land on their feet. And they would have to hit the ground pretty damn hard to get hurt.
But here’s the catch! A cat’s terminal velocity is about 40 km/h. And at that speed, the cat won’t get hurt!
So no matter how high you throw your cat from, it won’t get hurt by hitting the ground. Unless you throw the cat from so high up it chokes or freezes, it will survive!
And that’s all folks! Just a quick disclaimer: I never actually tried throwing cats out of airplanes. I’m not even fully confident about the terminal velocity of a cat – I just read it online. So if you throw a cat out of an airplane and it gets hurt, you’re a dick!
Stay tuned for next week’s installment, where we’ll be shooting hedgehogs into space with a sling!
(no, not really :p)
Update: The next (and probably final) edition of throwing cats is up! You can now find out what happens when you throw a cat into water!
February 5th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Hey Vlad,
Have to say i’m pretty impressed by the whole blog thing. =] It’s a really good idea.
Anyway, will see you tomorrow,
Jo x x x
February 11th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
[...] week, I showed you what happens when you throw a cat out of an airplane. Today, you will find out what happens when you throw a cat into [...]
February 18th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I cant find an internet reference to the incident I have in mind, but in the early to mid 1990′s a radio station in Las Vegas, NV did throw a cat out of a plane. The cat broke it’s legs but survived. (They suffered a large lawsuit due to animal cruelty. )
June 1st, 2010 at 12:39 am
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February 20th, 2011 at 5:59 pm
” I just read it online. So if you throw a cat out of an airplane and it gets hurt, you’re a dick!”
hahahahahaha
March 15th, 2011 at 5:53 am
You must be really stupid if you think that nothing will happened to cat if you drop it from aeroplane. I think you should use more resbonsible ways to teach physics. I have seen in my job several cats which are falled of the roof or window. They were as sure as hell NOT OK. Many cases they were so badly hurted that we must put then to the cats heaven. If you dont believe me I can drop 10lb object to your head from 50 feet and you can see how it effects to you.
April 24th, 2011 at 5:29 am
A cat’s terminal velocity is obviously dependent upon the cat’s furriness, size, weight etc, and will vary from cat to cat.
An underweight persian is optimal for surviving falls.
Cats are scared of heights over 10m, they do not waft like feathers.
According to internet, a typical terminal velocity for a cat is 100km/h, or 60mph. Much like a motorway car crash.
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“Using their righting reflex, cats can often land uninjured. This is, however, not always the case, and cats can still break bones or die from falls. In a 1987 study, published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, of 132 cats that were brought into the New York Animal Medical Center after having fallen from buildings, it was found that the injuries per cat increased depending on the height fallen up to seven stories but decreased above seven stories.
The study authors speculated that after falling five stories the cats reached terminal velocity and thereafter relaxed and spread their bodies to increase drag.
However, an alternative interpretation arriving from internet chat was that upon an excess of seven stories the cats experience a much higher fatality rate which precludes the owner from bringing them in for medical attention.”