《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》第91期:自由落體(1)
FREE FALL
自由落體
Q. What place on Earth would allow you tofree-fall the longest by jumping off it? What about using a squirrel suit?
Q．在地球上的哪個地方跳下去能讓你體驗到時間最久的自由落體？如果你穿着翼裝跳下去會有什麼影響？
——Dhash Shrivathsa
——達什•什裏瓦薩
A. THE LARGEST PURELY VERTICAL drop onEarth is the face of Canada's Mount Thor, which is shaped like this:
A．如果僅僅是看垂直落差的話，加拿大的托爾峯排名第一，它的樣子大概是這樣的：
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.
爲了讓跳崖這件事不那麼驚悚，我們不妨在山腳下挖個坑，裏面填滿了鬆軟的東西，比如棉花糖，這樣你就不至於摔死了。
Would this work? You'll have to wait forbook two . . .
這個方法可行嗎？敬請期待《那些古怪又讓人憂心的問題》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.
如果一個人下落時四肢伸展，那麼最終墜落速度會在每秒55米上下。要達到這個速度至少要下落幾百米的距離，因而要花上26秒多一點的時間你才能墜到山腳下。
What can you do in 26 seconds?
在這26秒你能做些什麼呢？
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.
這段時間足夠你玩完原版“超級馬里奧”的第一關，前提是你時間拿捏精準，並且利用管子抄近道。
It's also long enough to miss a phone nt's ring cycle-the time the phone rings before going to voicemail-is 23seconds.
這點時間還足夠你錯過一個電話。斯普林特公司的振鈴週期——即打電話轉入語音郵箱所需要等待的時間——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.
這意味着如果有人打電話給你，而就在你跳下去的那一刻手機鈴響了，那麼在你墜落到地面3秒前電話會轉入語音郵箱。
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.
而如果你從愛爾蘭210米高的莫赫懸崖上往下跳，你只能翱翔約8秒的時間——如果上升氣流強的話可能還會更久一點兒。這段時間看起來不長，不過裏弗•塔姆表示，只要有充足的真空吸塵設備，這段時間足夠把你全身的血液都抽乾。
So far, we've assumed you're fallingvertically. But you don't have to.
到目前爲止，我們假設的是你是垂直下落，但別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.
即使不穿戴特殊裝置，一個經驗豐富的跳傘運動員也能在抵達全速之後以近45度的角度滑翔。通過這個技巧，你可以極大地延長下落時間。
