Imagine you are on the observation deck at the top of the Eiffel Tower. You spot a girl make a wish and toss a penny over the edge of the building. Suddenly, you see and pedestrian below get hit by the penny and appears to have collapsed. He is dead.
Although this is a classic urban legend, is it true? Ever since the creation of skyscrapers, this story has existed. The myth first came about when the Empire State Building was being built. Construction workers would make jokes about dropping pennies off the top. Since then, people have thought that if a penny is dropped at the top of the building, it would gather enough velocity to go through the skull of a pedestrian below, killing them instantaneously or make a dent in the sidewalk. Despite efforts to test this, a penny has never been dropped off of the Empire State Building due to security reasons involving this myth.
A test done by 20/20, a news program on ABC, as well as a test done by Myth Busters show that this myth is only a myth. A penny only weighs about one gram and as it falls, it tumbles. Because there is so much air resistance and the penny is not very aerodynamic, it will never gather enough speed to kill a person. As Myth Busters calculated, the fastest the penny could go, or its terminal velocity is about 65 miles per hour. The speed of the penny isrelatively slow and if you are hit, it will feel like you are being hit by a bug.
This myth, on the other hand, does have a grain of truth. Why do you think construction workers wear helmets? If the object is much heavier like a nut or bolt that weighs about 50 grams or an aerodynamic ball point pen, it can speed up to a couple miles an hour which can be extremely dangerous and in
that case may kill a person. For example, a bullet weighs about 5 to 10 grams and can go from 800 to 2000 miles per hour depending on the type of gun as well as the type of bullet and the amount of gun powder. A bullet can defiantly kill a person and so can a relatively large object that is dropped off a skyscraper.If one penny is dropped off the Eiffel Tower, it can go to about 65 mile per hour. That means it will have a little less than one foot-pound of energy when it hits the ground, which may hurt a little. If it is a 50 gram nut or a roll of 50 pennies, and were to fall 1000 feet, it would be the energy of 100 foot-pounds. So if you were to get hit in the head with that… well let’s hope you have a helmet on.
Videos from youtube.com
Penny photo from istockphoto.com
Eiffel tower photo from travelhouseuk.com
