ELI5, Why do larger things appear to fall much slower, does it appear slower or is it actually slow?

Question

I was watching some ‘end of the world’ movies, and quite a few of them seem to a have a shot of a massive skyscraper collapsing. But this look very slow almost as if in slow motion. Even in movies that show perspective of insects, human actions are much slower ( the pest killer scene in the ant bully)

So is this just a weird thing movies implement to make it look cool or is this an actual phenomenon and why does it occur?

Thanks

In: 0

Answer 1

Skyscrapers fall at the same acceleration rate as planned implosion smokestacks and nuclear cooling towers. These things are just big, a perspective hard to comprehend like a plane slowly floating across the sky, because it is 50 meters long and 10 km up.

It takes a long time for an object to fall 500 feet, and a large structure collapse has to hit and damage more of the building as it collapses, slowing it further.

The representation of a bug and “giant” people is for your benefit to recognize how big the objects are in comparison. A movie about bees from their perspective in actual time would be like they were going 1000km/hr.