What will be shall be

Interesting

It was another one of our many group discussions in class as we settled round a table. A group consists of 7 to 8 men and we were given a case study to discuss which we had to present later on.

As usual, our formal discussion lasted at most 10 minutes and we started to drift off to other things irrelevant. We started to talk about games, football and etc when one of our group members shared with us something interesting.

This is the question he posed.

If you are standing on the 20th storey and you dropped a 20 cents coin down and it landed on someone's head, will it cause a crack in that person's skull?

A friendly debate started and most of us agreed that yes, it will cause a crack. The more 'scientific people' gave their explanation that when an object fell from a high point, it will start to gather momentum because of velocity and in turn turned into a force that is huge enough to kill.

The guy who posed this question then told us that this question came from a television program he saw. The television program will pose such questions and then do an experiment. And so this is how the experiment is conducted.

A 20 cent coin is inserted into a M16 and then fired towards a target board(don't ask me how they put the coin inside the machine gun, I may be a soldier but i really don't know). Anyway after the shot was fired, the experimenters went to retrieve the 20 cents coin and found that it was dented but the target board was 'unhurt'.

The experimenters then explained the logic why. Because the 20 cents coin was very light, it is not enough to cause any fatal wound and so even despite traveling at such a high speed, it is unable to cause any harm because of its weight. Instead it will be dented.

Then he asked us another one. When a person is struck in a quicksand, will he totally sink into the quicksand and die of suffocation?

The answer is no. The common misconception is that a quicksand will suck a person into the sand until you cannot see the person anymore. But that is not the case. The experiment is done using a man-made quicksand and a dummy the weight of an average human being was thrown in. Eventually the dummy was sucked in until its chest level. That is the maximum it can go.

The people then explained that people won't die because they were sucked into the quicksand. Its because after being sucked to chest level, its almost impossible to get up unless special tools were used. They died due to dehydration or hunger.

And then it was my turn to ask a question. A poly classmate asked me this a couple of years ago and until now I still don't know the answer.

The question:
Imagine you are standing in a fast moving train. Then you jump. Will you still land on the same spot from where you jump?

One classmate offered his theory. He said that if the train is moving at a constant speed of ,let's say 100 km/hr. If you jumped then, then yes, you will land on the same spot because if you are in a train traveling 100 km/hr, that means you are travelling at 100 km/hr as well. But if the train is accelerating, let's say from 50km to 100km/hr, then you will not land at the spot from you jump because when you jump, you are already not traveling the same speed as the train due to its acceleration.

I accepted his theory as I was never a good Science student. But what he says does make sense from a Scientific point of view. But if you ask me, I will also tell you that if the train is accelerating and you jump, you will not land on the same spot. Because you will collapse into a heap and make a fool out of yourself.

Discussions like these are very interesting. The only bad thing is these people make me feel so stupid and ignorant. I hate Science.

posted by malmoncolo @ 8:03 PM