iPhone survives 16,000 foot drop from Alaska Airlines flight where panel ripped off
Two cell phones were recovered from the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jet that had an inflight explosive episode as it flew across Oregon over the weekend.
The incident occurred on Friday just as the plane was making its way to Ontario, California.
During a news conference on Sunday, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy confirmed that the devices were recovered by residents in the area where the door plug fell from the structure.
“Some community members found a cell phone in a yard and a cell phone on the side of the road and contacted us and handed them in,” she said.
One of the devides, which appears to be an iPhone, still appeared to be completely intact and functional after it dropped from 16,000 feet in the sky. The cell phone still had part of a charger attached to it.
One of those residents appeared to have posted his discovery to X, formerly Twitter, writing, “found an iPhone on the side of the road… Still in airplane mode with half a battery and open to baggage claim for #AlaskaAirlines ASA1282.”
Okay i dont completely understand it, but i think i get the gist of it. But i grew up hearing the what if of throwing marbles and pennies off a skyscraper killing people cause of the falling velocity. I assume thats not correct then?
It doesnt really add up in my mind. How doesnt any object gain more speed as it falls, ive read stories of people dieing by being struck by falling debris. Im less confused on the velocity thing and more confused on how if a phone falling 16000 feet were to hit someone in the head theyd be fine, but if it hit some grass then the item itself would be okay.
Its cool to be downvoted for being ignorant, but id think people would be a bit understanding because it just doesnt seem to make sense to me. And i at least admit that.
Totally respect you for saying you don't get it. Way better to admit what you don't know.
In a vacuum, you would be correct that things falling to earth would just keep accelerating until they hit the ground. But we have air which slows things down. Everything that falls in earths atmosphere reaches it's terminal velocity if it falls from a high enough height.
One way to think of it is to think about how anything falling in air has to push the air below it out of the way to fall. If I just jump out of a plane, I'm going to accelerate to a velocity that will likely kill me. Now if I bring a parachute, I'm bringing more weight, but I'm also able to push against a lot more air and the amount of air I push against will slow me enough that even though I'm still falling, my terminal velocity is low enough that I can survive.
The more air something can push against in comparison to it's mass, the lower it's terminal velocity. That being said everything falling in our atmosphere will reach a point where gravity can't pull it through the air resistance any faster. The force of gravity and air resistance are balanced. That is it's terminal velocity.
But there is a lot less air high up in the sky, so wouldnt it speed up untill it got closer to the ground where the air resistance kicks in. Or is 16000 feet not as high as i think it is. I know things in space keep accelerating because of the lack of air and burn up. But maybe its just the scale of things that I'm not wrapping my head around. I apologize for asking stupid questions. It just seems crazy a phone can survive that drop.
This article has a chart of oxygen % at varying attitudes, which I thought was interesting.
https://milehightraining.com/altitude-to-oxygen-chart/
There's roughly half the oxygen there vs sea level, and is the height of the everest base camp, where you don't need supplied oxygen.
No clue if half oxygen means half everything else in the air though.