How Ridiculous Drops a Tungsten Cube From 1000 Feet. Will It Reach Terminal Velocity?
What happens when you have a nice sized budget and you just want to do some fun stuff? Well, for one — you could drop a bunch of objects out of a helicopter from 1000 feet and see which one makes the biggest hole. Yup. That’s exactly what they did in this How Ridiculous video.
Of the objects they dropped, there is of course that giant metal dart as well as a 330 kilogram steel Hulk fist (I don’t know why). However, I really like the tungsten cube. When it hit the ground, it went to a depth of 64 centimeters (only the Hulk fist and dart went deeper).
However, I think this is a great chance to look at the motion of a falling object — including air resistance and the impact with the ground.
Impact Speed Without Air
Just as a start, let’s calculate the speed the tungsten cube will have on impact if we ignore the air resistance — so, just the gravitational force. Honestly, I have no idea if air will even make a significant difference. I’m working on…
