Why jumping into water from great height feels like landing in concrete?

442 views

Why jumping into water from great height feels like landing in concrete?

In: 5

15 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because liquids have this property called viscosity. It measures how much the layers of the liquid can slide against each other.

You can think of gases as having very low viscosity. You don’t really feel any resistance unless your hand is moving very fast through the air. Liquids have a much harder time allowing that motion. So if you splash into water at high speeds, it will resist your motion infinitely more than at lower speeds. Hence why it feels like landing on a hard object.

It’s the same as slamming your hand on a pool of water vs. a pool of maple syrup. You’ll hurt your hand much more easily on the syrup pool, even if all you do is lightly slapping the surface.

There are liquids that are much less viscous than water though. Supercooled helium (which is a gas that has been cooled enough to become a liquid) has insanely low viscosity, for example. But, needless to say, I wouldn’t recommend jumping into that.

You are viewing 1 out of 15 answers, click here to view all answers.