Those who've seen this film, remember when the elephant falls out of the plane and it's parachute isn't opened and a guy jumps out after it and is able to catch up with it and open it's parachute before it hits the ground?
This makes no sense whatsoever. The elephant weighs many more times than the man, so it would fall much faster. There's no way he could possibly catch up to it before it hit the ground.
Who cares
shareactually, all objects fall at the same rate regardless of weight. If you ever try skydiving, you'll find that u can manipulate the way that you fall by making yourself more aerodynamic. So although this scene is still extremely far-fetched, it is slightly possible.
shareYa, I didn't even think about that. Plus the fact that the elephant is in a box, at least from what I remember or even if he's not it's so damn big it'd catch a lot of wind so really that guy probably could have caught him.
Charlie Bronson's always got rope.
He could easily catch up to a very non-aerodynamic platform. Each object has a terminal velocity, for a human 54 mph in a standard falling position and 90 mph for a position reducing the area of the body hitting the air by tucking the arms in. For the platform and an 8000 lb elephant, I estimate about 50-60 mph max, so a human could plausibly catch the elephant.
sharemsmouse is an idiot.
shareIf you actually watch the scene you would see that he points his body downward which accelerates him significantly, when you first fall out of the plane and you fall down it's kinda like a bird flying you glide down, but if you put your hands at your side and point down with your body you fall faster like a bird swooping down...
shareThe rate that an object falls is determined by two factors, gravity and air resistance, which is determined by the mass and shape of the falling object. This was very visually proven during one of the moon landing missions when an astronaut dropped a hammer and a feather at the same time. They both hit the ground together.
A skilled sky diver, and all Special Forces are that, can manipulate his/her body to attain very high terminal velocities. However, the maximum possible terminal velocity decreases as altitude decreases. This is because the air is thicker at lower altitudes and thus more resistive to a body falling through it.
I did see a problem with this scene that would affect whether or not Capt. Doyle could catch up with Bo Tat. Bo Tat managed to stay fairly stable and keep the bottom of the platform under him. This effectively increased resistance and decreased terminal speed. I think that, in a real situation, the platform and Bo Tat would have tumbled quite a bit and would have had a higher velocity than with a stable platform.
it's all about gravity.
shareWow, the original poster must be entirely scientifically ignorant. Seriously, that whole post was a complete travesty.
shareWell, given the wind resistance that the box would have encountered...and the fact that Liotta would have angled himself to make him more arodynamic, and the fact that he jumped right after the box...there's a good chance that he could have caught it.
There's a mad man in there with his hand on a...on a BUTTON!
Plus, let us remember that the "elephant" in the drop box was animatronic! So, the two of them put together probably weighed _considerably less_ than Tai (the actual elephant) did on the ground.
Which, in turn, probably meant an even faster catch-up by the free-falling parachutist doubles.
Try it - Drop a watermelon and an orange from a distance of 20 feet and they will hit the ground at the same time.
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He lifts me clear to the sky, you know he taught me to fly.
They should try this on Mythbusters. Someone notify Discovery Channel.
But, in the end, just keep repeating to yourself: "It's only a movie. It's only a movie."
They did try this on Mythbusters. Althought it was based on a scene in Point Break when Keanu Reeves catches up to Patrick Swayze even though Swayze had a fifteen second head start. They confirmed the myth that if a person puts themselves in a streamlined position they can catch up to another person or object with a head start.
Roll the ugliness
Learn some physics before posting, you dummy.
shareElephant has bigger ears than a human
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