Why can you not jump off a falling object to break your momentum?
In: 1
[Let’s start with this video](https://youtu.be/BLuI118nhzc?t=23)
The ball, while resting in the cannon, is still moving because it is on the moving truck. The cannon is fired so that the forward velocity coming from the truck and the backward velocity from the cannon balance out, and the ball just falls straight down. If the cannon were less powerful, the ball would move to the left, despite the cannon pointing right, because the speed from the truck would overpower the speed from the canon, so the net velocity ti to the left.
If you are in a falling elevator, you are falling at the same speed as the elevator. If you jump, you are adding upward momentum but it still nets out that you are falling very quickly.
The thing that confuses people is that because we can only detect movement relatively (as in compared to something), we see that we would move “upwards” compared to the elevator around us, but it and whoever is in it is still falling.
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