A human falling down from three times their own height (six metres or so) would be horribly injured, while bugs seem to just walk on. How does this work? Shouldn’t they be falling at a similar speed, due to gravity?
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Your assumption about falling at the same speed applies if there’s no air resistance, but there’s a lot of air resistance, and even a little bit of updraft will keep tiny bug airborne or at least greatly slow. It’s descent. On top of that, it’s not just about the speed with which an object falls. You have to consider the amount of mass involved in the collision between the ground and whatever’s hitting it. Ultimately, it comes down to the physics formula F = ma, which means force equals mass times acceleration. Assuming there was no air resistance, then the acceleration part of that formula is the same for both a person and a small insect, but the mass is greatly different. A small insect may weigh a fraction of a gram, while a human weighs 70 to 100 kg or more. Literally thousands of times more. That means there’s literally thousands of times the force acting on a suddenly decelerating human then there would be on a small insect. When you add in the effects of air resistance, the difference is even greater.
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