Curious as to what would happen if I perfectly time it. Would I be safe? Lets say the building is 4 stories high
In: Physics
Good ole’ Einstein can help here with the theory of relativity.
If you’re on a train that’s heading north at 30 km/h, anyone watching the train go by will see you moving at 30 km/h. But then you get up and walk towards the back of the train (south) at 1 km/h, from your perspective you’re moving at 1km/h. Now go back to the guy watching the train (that has windows) and he sees you on the train moving towards the back. His perspective will see you moving 30 km/h north, and 1 km/h south, for a net total of you moving 29 km/h north.
The Mythbusters tested this by getting a cannon that can shoot a soccer ball at 50 km/h, then mounting it on the back of a truck (facing out the back of the flat bed), then fire it while the truck is moving at 50 km/h. The speed of the car and the speed of the cannon countered each other, so it the ball dropped straight down, as the only force not being countered was gravity. It’s pretty neat and I’d recommend watching it to learn about this stuff.
So yeah, when jumping off a bridge that’s falling, you have to take into account the speed you’re falling (you’d be accelerating at 9.8 m/s, btw) and the amount of speed you get jumping up.
You also now have to take into account how forces interact with one another. If you’re in a pool floating on your back, and try to jump horizontally by pushing off an inflatable raft, you’re more likely to just push the raft away without getting much movement yourself. You can push off walls and stuff because the force you’re using isn’t enough to move the wall, so you get flung back.
You’d need to have enough force to make a significant jump that would be enough to counter Gravity’s force on you, but not so much that you’re just pushing the bridge down rather than yourself up. Which btw, is impossible as far as my high school physics education has taught me.
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