Understanding My Second Shot at Life

Ibrahim Rivera

Many can consider a second chance at life a miracle according to religious beliefs or just plain old good luck. After one experiences the scare, people tend to ask how did the mishap occur, and one can easily explain the circumstances as one is most likely to remember the situation, but the key question of how one survived never gets answered. What about the physics behind the second chance at life? Well I’m one of the people who have been in this unique position and the following accounts are the physics behind my survival.

As a third grade student I weighed approximately 90 pounds, compared to the average weight of a third grade student of 60.7 pounds according to Healthy Kids New Mexico. As an overweight kid I lacked the agility of a healthy boy my age, and this was proven when an iron gate fell on me. I didn’t have the reflexes to react on time and escape the scene, and since “the motion of falling objects is the simplest and most common example of motion with changing velocity,” the iron-gate fell on me hard, striking me noticeably harder on my head and knees. According to Galileo, the steeper the incline, the more rapidly the ball would have gained speed, as velocity increases more gradually on gentle slopes, but the motion is otherwise the same as the motion of a falling object. Galileo’s experiment applies to my incident as the 350-pound gate being originally at a 90-degree angle tilted when its support broke and its gravitational force was applied on my body. 

But what helped me was the friction between the gate and the ground, which consisted of slippery dirt that allowed me to push the gate further away from me as it began to fall on me. For example “in a collision, slowing down the deceleration by even a few tenths of a second can create a drastic reduction in the force involved.” Force can be calculated by the equation mass times acceleration, which therefore “cutting the deceleration in half also cuts the force in half.” This was the explanation to how not all the gate’s force fell completely on my body. I was able to push the gate as it began tilting towards me more than a couple of feet away from me, while I had the chance to grab the top of the 7-foot gate. Once it fell on me part of the force was exerted on my hands and arms, so not all the force could be applied to my face. This human instinct of protecting the face also helped me survive the massive forces being exerted, once the gate took me down to the ground. 

To the person with little insight in physics, would immediately tell me that my cause for survival was my weight. But if one uses Galileo’s experiments, the conclusion would lead one into believing that all heavy streamlined objects take about the same time to hit the ground, so my 90 pounds compared to the average 60.7 pounds of an average boy my age is irrelative and can be neglected as of this conclusion. The factor of eliminating as much of the force exerted on one was my case for survival, and it can be successfully attributed to deceleration. 

References:

Grabianowski, Ed. "HowStuffWorks "Force of Impact"." Howstuffworks "Auto ". N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2011. . 

New Mexico Department of Health. "New Mexico BMI Surveillance Report." BMI Surveillance. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2011. . 

"The Motion of Falling Objects." Virtual Institute of Applied Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2011. .