Height
I was watching an old Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons in which Ned Flanders has the ability to forsee people’s deaths. After predicting that Dr. Hibbert would fall to his demise, it comes to pass when he attempts to retrieve Homer’s Frisbee from outside the window. The writers get a joke in as he falls and I remember thinking “wow, that’s a long way down.”
Let’s figure out just how high the hospital is.
We can approximate the height of the building using the following formula:
Where h is the height in meters, g is the acceleration due to gravity, and t is the time in seconds. We will assume the time it takes to reach the ground approximates the height of the hospital building.
Dr. Hibbert falls for approximately eight seconds. Solving for the height we get:
The Shard in London is the tallest building in the UK, stretching over three hundred meters high.
That’s one tall hospital.
I’m also reminded of the annual Pumpkin Drop at Boston University. In a similar way, you can find the height of the building based on the time it takes the pumpkin to fall. Below you can try it out yourself.
🎃
Image from Frinkiac