This is how the iPhone survived a fall of about 5,000 meters from a plane

He iPhone He was lying on the ground, in airplane mode, the battery half full. The screen, completely intact, shows a $70 receipt for two checked bags. Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.

Named social media users Sean Bates The device was found while walking on Barnes Road near Highway 217 Portland, OregonHe posted X, earlier on Twitter on Sunday.

“Survived a 16,000 ft (4,878 m) fall,” he tweeted. When he called National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the federal agency investigating the incident, to report the phone, learned “it was the second phone that had been found,” he wrote.

When the plain door stopper Alaska Airlines The explosion occurred minutes after takeoff on Friday night, leaving a door-shaped hole in the plane Boeing 737 Max 9. A handful of items were sucked from the plane at 16,000 feet. The iPhone found by Bates was likely one of them, the NTSB told media outlets.

The plane made an emergency landing and despite extensive damage to the interior of the plane, everyone on board survived.

It’s unclear if the other phone found at the yard, according to the NTSB, was an iPhone. The NTSB did not respond to a request for comment The Washington Post.

According to a photo posted by Bates, a broken plug was still inside the charging socket, suggesting the phone was sucked in while it was charging in what is being investigated as an explosive depressurization accident.

The iPhone is known for many things: surviving a 16,000-foot drop from an airplane is not one of them. Almost anyone who owns a smartphone has had the experience of dropping the smartphone and having the screen crack.

And while smartphone screens have gotten a lot stronger over the years, this phone’s existence depends on physics.

“The basic answer is air resistance,” said Duncan Watts, a postdoctoral researcher Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo. “I think the paradox here is that an iPhone falling from the sky doesn’t go as fast because of air resistance.”

Anything approaching Earth will reach a point known as terminal velocity, where the force of gravity can no longer accelerate it due to air resistance in the atmosphere.

“If the phone falls with the screen against the ground, there is some resistance, but if the phone falls up and down, it is significantly less”Watts said. “The phone will actually fall a bit and get a lot of wind, essentially creating an upward force.”

According to Watts, a larger iPhone with a lower screen would have a terminal speed of about 30 mph. “The bigger the iPhone, the lower the terminal speed,” he said. “The maximum is around 100 mph, but that will only happen when the phone screen is perpendicular to the ground.”

Watts said that when we drop a phone from waist height, it hits the ground at about 10 mph, while a phone dropped from the top of an airplane might only reach 50 mph.

Watts noted that if the phone had fallen on a rock or sidewalk, it would have definitely been damaged, but grass or foliage that fell on the mattress seems to be the case.

“If the iPhone had fallen on a grassy area, it would have definitely survived the fall.”Watts said. “If the phone was facing down, it would have stabilized at about 30 mph on a relatively comfortable surface, with slightly less force than if I had decided to stop on it.”

According to Apple, the company that makes the iPhone, if the device is dropped, it can be damaged. Apple’s user manual doesn’t specify how high a drop the iPhone can withstand.

“Handle the iPhone with care. It is made of metal, glass and plastic and contains sensitive electronic components.”, says the guide. “If iPhone or its battery is dropped, burned, punctured, crushed, or exposed to liquid, it may be damaged.”

In a TikTok video uploaded on Sunday by Bates, who did not respond to a request for comment on Monday, he said he found the phone under a tree while walking to find items that had fallen from the plane. At first he was “a little suspicious” that it belonged to an Alaska Airlines passenger.

After opening it, he found a travel confirmation for an Alaska Airlines flight and called the NTSB at the same time, he said. “It was still pretty clean,” he said. “There are no scratches.”

Apparently this isn’t the first time an iPhone has survived a fall from the sky. In June 2023, a TikTok user named Hatton Smith Posted a video of his iPhone being saved after falling out of his pocket while skydiving at 14,000 feet.

The phone landed in an area covered in grass and mud, which can be seen in his TikTok video.

In both cases, if the iPhone had fallen on concrete, it probably wouldn’t have survived.

“If it lands on wet ground, you can see it has about an inch of cushion,” Watts said. “Probably feels like sitting in a chair.”

(c) 2024, The Washington Post