Can you imagine flying at 16,000 feet in a Boeing 737 Max, seeing your iPhone fall into the void and still surviving intact? We do not recommend trying it, but the truth is that it happened recently. It happened on board the famous Alaska Airlines plane which lost part of the fuselage in mid-flight. The iPhone 14 Pro that fell from this plane belonged to a certain Cuong Tran and someone found it a few days later on the side of a road.
And yes, in perfect condition. So much so that they were able to locate its origin by seeing an email indicating the passenger’s reservation for said flight. Such an unusual fact makes us wondering if it is a marketing campaign, even if in reality it is not. Once again, science has the answer to prove that this was a rare event, but not at all unusual for the purposes of physics.
A paranormal event that is actually very normal
That a cell phone falls from 16,000 feet to the ground and remains intact would be something worthy of an advertising spot from any manufacturer to highlight its resistance, although always with an indication that reflects that it is of a fiction. And it is understandable that it is difficult for us to believe that he survived this incident. I admit that I was one of those skeptics who believed that in one way or another Apple had participated in a setup aimed at “selling” the great resistance of its mobile phones. Especially since that’s not the company’s style.
However, experts have verified the reality of the event and this is what gives rise to the following doubt: how did he survive? You have surely already witnessed or heard about an iPhone breaking down for much more normal and seemingly safe causes. You may have even experienced it, because it is very common that you drop it from a small height, suddenly pick it up from the ground and see the screen shattered. Or at least a few scratches.
Luis Ángel Tejedor is a professor of electronic communications engineering at the Complutense University of Madrid and recently spoke to El País for solve this curious mystery about the resistance of the iPhone.
“Three elements intervened to keep the phone intact: Newton’s second law, the impact surface and the design of the device. The longer the phone is subjected to the force of gravity, the greater the acceleration of 9, 8 m/s² and the higher speed it achieves.
In Christian terms, at least for those of us who are not physics experts like Tejedor, this explains that It doesn’t matter how high the iPhone fell from, since this element itself does not intervene, although the time it takes to hit the ground and the acceleration it takes. And at some point it doesn’t matter whether you fall from the fifth floor or from 4 km height, as it was.
“The faster the phone falls, the greater the force of friction until there comes a point where the force of friction is equal to that of gravity and the object is no longer accelerating; this speed is called speed limit.”
The factor that most influenced the survival of the iPhone was… luck.
However, the key element in this story is luck, since The iPhone fell into the grass. Knowing that it didn’t matter how high the device fell, what determined whether or not it was easier to break was the material it collided with. And this is easy to understand even for those who are inexperienced in the matter: a blow against a surface like grass is not the same as against cement. Ultimately, this is a basic principle of kinetic energy that Tejedor did well to recall in his statements to El País.
“This energy [cinética], upon impact, must dissipate somehow. If the phone falls on grass, it will be dedicated to moving soft grass, but if it falls on cement or asphalt, which are rigid, the energy will be devoted to deforming the different parts of the mobile , destroying it.
In conclusion, it is clear to us that no miraculous or paranormal events occurred with the iPhone falling from a plane. Of course, this also influences whether the terminal has a case and a screen protector. Although it cannot be ruled out that the damage would have been less without them, the truth is that it gave it additional robustness.
So, the main element of everything is luck. Here we can make all kinds of theories regarding the universe, karma, gods or guardian angels who were on the owner’s side. And that’s it If he had fallen a few meters, he would have collided with the road.. And here we would be talking about someone finding a destroyed iPhone, but probably not knowing (or not so easily) that it belonged to someone on the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max.
By | The country
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