I just saw a video of trout being dropped from an airplane to stock mountain lakes.
So I was thinking, if I was suspended in water (let’s say I was in the middle of a 4m di. water balloon), and I was dropped from an airplane (let’s say 50m above the water), would being suspended in water help ease the impact of hitting the water? Or would it be more like a water balloon hitting concrete?
In: Physics
Since water isn’t compressible, when it hits, there’s going to be a pressure shock wave through the water. Neither the landing pool nor the dropped ball of water want to give, but the water ball has the option of spreading out horizontally. But it’s being forced to by the impact and that’s going to produce a compression pressure inside the water as it hits.
Your falling ball of water is going to apply a crushing force on whatever is inside it. Mythbusters showed that fish aren’t tolerant of those kinds of pressure shocks – if you fired a bullet into a barrel with fish in it, you will kill fish without even hitting them. Bullets may be fast, but 4m diameter water balloon is HEAVY – 1 cubic meter of water is 1 ton by definition. That much water being forced to change direction on impact crushing the fish… it would be totally lethal for any decent fall.
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