How does hitting water at a big height feel like landing on concrete?

880 viewsOtherPlanetary Science

I failed all my science courses, I don’t understand much about science but why doesn’t the water just… move like when you jump in normally?

In: Planetary Science

20 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

This may be a terrible analogy but it might also make sense so bear with me: if you push a car that is in neutral using your car, the car in neutral will move. If you take that same car you pushed before and drive into the back of it at 50 mph, the car will still move but it’ll mess your car up a lot more than the first time round. It’s a similar principle. The water will move but it takes work to move it. If you do that work over a long period of time then the maximum force is fairly small. But if you try to transfer all of that energy at once then you get one big spike of force that is high enough to kill you. The water doesn’t act the same as concrete, they just say it’s as good as hitting concrete because the force isn’t spread out over a long period of time so both will kill you

You are viewing 1 out of 20 answers, click here to view all answers.