What would happen? Would the water hit the roof of the elevator since the elevator is falling rapidly?
I thought about it when I put Eye Drops in an elevator.
In: Physics
The water will fall on the floor.
The two questions that are important here is ‘how fast does water fall?’ and ‘how fast do elevators move?’
A droplet of water has a terminal velocity of around 10 meters per second – the terminal velocity being the fastest it will fall under the force of gravity.
An average elevator may travel at a speed of around 1m/s.
What this means is that if you hold your bottle a meter above the floor, and pour out some water, it will take about 1/10th of a second for it to fall and hit the floor. During this 1/10th of a second however, the elevator will have continued descending, around 0.1m which the water will have to fall.
So it will take longer for the water to hit the ground of an elevator if you pour it out while descending (and conversely, less time if the elevator is rising), but only a tiny fraction of a second (about 1/100th second longer).
If you want your water to float, you would need the elevator to be moving at a speed equal to the terminal velocity of water.
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