Re: Henry LaMothe

[brian whatcott <inet@INTELLISYS.NET>]

At 20:57 11/2/00 -0600, you wrote:
> > This is in the 6th edition ofHalliday, Resnick,
> > Walker Fundamentals. They give height as 30 m,
> > water depth as 30 cm and say that M. LaMothe did
> > his act until he was in his 90's.
>
> This sounds incredible.  Whatever speed he reaches in the fall he has to
> loose again in the tub, so v^2 = 2 a(1) x(1) = 2 a(2) x(2) , or
>
>     a(2) = g x(1)/x(2) = g  30m/0.3m = 100 g
>
> So his average acceleration is 100 g during the stop.  Is that survivable?
> He's going from 90 km/hr to 0 in 0.025 s!
>
>
> Tim

Seat belts are rated for 30g accelerations, if I recall.
 The pressure that represents, if uniformly distributed over
the body length, is quite a bit greater than that posed by
the belly flop in question. I seem to recall the threshold for
 death is over 200g if uniformly distributed.


brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net>  Altus OK
                Eureka!