Obviously I know hitting the surface of water flatly would be lethal but you should be able to stay relatively unharmed if you jump like divers do.
In: Physics
Simply put, a matter of energy and resistance.
Many different matter have different density, viscosity, etc.
When something reach a liquid, they need to break the surface and move water. Simple rule: You can’t be somewhere where there is no room. So you need to move things. When you jump in water, some of your energy is transferred to the water to make it move. When you jump like a diver, you move less water at a time. You only move a bit of water every milliseconds. As a result, you need only minimal energy to do so. (important for part 2: The amount of energy sent to try and split water)
On the other hand, when you jump and land flat, you’re trying to move a LOT more water at the same time, which mean a LOT more energy spent trying to move it every milliseconds.
And in here come’s Newton’s 3rd law: “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. That’s where the problem lies. When you break the water surface, you take as strong a shock than the water. By boing diver style, you slowly ramp up the amount of energy needed, by doses that your body can take without breaking. When doing a flat, you go from 0 to 100 almost immediatly taking a very strong backlash, potentially stronger than your body can afford.
Now that we know why this happen, it’s quite simple to understand why jumping from too high is lethal: By jumping from higher, you can go faster (until terminal velocity). Going faster means more energy. More energy mean more backlash. The same issue as the first case, but rather than taking more energy because you’re diving poorly, you simply increased the total initial energy so much that even doing things correctly doesn’t diffuse the energy enough.
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