《那些古怪又让人忧心的问题》第91期:自由落体(1)

FREE FALL

自由落体

Q. What place on Earth would allow you tofree-fall the longest by jumping off it? What about using a squirrel suit?

Q．在地球上的哪个地方跳下去能让你体验到时间最久的自由落体？如果你穿着翼装跳下去会有什么影响？

——Dhash Shrivathsa

——达什•什里瓦萨

A. THE LARGEST PURELY VERTICAL drop onEarth is the face of Canada's Mount Thor, which is shaped like this:

A．如果仅仅是看垂直落差的话，加拿大的托尔峰排名第一，它的样子大概是这样的：

To make this scenario a little lessgruesome, let's suppose there's a pit at the bottom of the cliff filled withsomething fluffy-like cotton candy-to safely break your fall.

为了让跳崖这件事不那么惊悚，我们不妨在山脚下挖个坑，里面填满了松软的东西，比如棉花糖，这样你就不至于摔死了。

Would this work? You'll have to wait forbook two . . .

这个方法可行吗？敬请期待《那些古怪又让人忧心的问题》第二卷

A human falling with arms and legsoutstretched has a terminal velocity in the neighborhood of 55 meters persecond. It takes a few hundred meters to get up to speed, so it would take youa little over 26 seconds to fall the full distance.

如果一个人下落时四肢伸展，那么最终坠落速度会在每秒55米上下。要达到这个速度至少要下落几百米的距离，因而要花上26秒多一点的时间你才能坠到山脚下。

What can you do in 26 seconds?

在这26秒你能做些什么呢？

For starters, it's enough time to get allthe way through the original Super Mario World 1-1, assuming you have perfecttiming and take the shortcut through the pipe.

这段时间足够你玩完原版“超级马里奥”的第一关，前提是你时间拿捏精准，并且利用管子抄近道。

It's also long enough to miss a phone nt's ring cycle-the time the phone rings before going to voicemail-is 23seconds.

这点时间还足够你错过一个电话。斯普林特公司的振铃周期——即打电话转入语音邮箱所需要等待的时间——是23秒。

If someone called your phone, and itstarted ringing the moment you jumped, it would go to voicemail three secondsbefore you reached the bottom.

这意味着如果有人打电话给你，而就在你跳下去的那一刻手机铃响了，那么在你坠落到地面3秒前电话会转入语音邮箱。

On the other hand, if you jumped offIreland's 210-meter Cliffs of Moher, you would be able to fall for only abouteight seconds-or a little more, if the updrafts were strong. That's not verylong, but according to River Tam, given adequate vacuuming systems it might beenough time to drain all the blood from your body.

而如果你从爱尔兰210米高的莫赫悬崖上往下跳，你只能翱翔约8秒的时间——如果上升气流强的话可能还会更久一点儿。这段时间看起来不长，不过里弗•塔姆表示，只要有充足的真空吸尘设备，这段时间足够把你全身的血液都抽干。

So far, we've assumed you're fallingvertically. But you don't have to.

到目前为止，我们假设的是你是垂直下落，但别忘了你可以不直直下落。

Even without any special equipment, askilled skydiver-once he or she gets up to full speed-can glide at almost a45-degree angle. By gliding away from the base of the cliff, you couldconceivably extend your fall substantially.

即使不穿戴特殊装置，一个经验丰富的跳伞运动员也能在抵达全速之后以近45度的角度滑翔。通过这个技巧，你可以极大地延长下落时间。