This calculator calculates the theoretical speed you're travelling at the end of falling a certain distance. It completely ignores things like friction (air, rock, rope, or otherwise). We don't advocate trying to empirically validate these results using your body. Climbing is dangerous. Insert standard disclaimer here.
If you fill in the height, you'll get the time and speed at the end of your fall. If you're kind enough to supply your mass, you'll also get the energy in joules (newton-meters) when you hit the deck. :-) See the plot at the end of the page to see how impact velocity varies with height.
As is probably obvious, the higher you are, the harder you land. The relationship looks like this, in km/h:
So, basically, that means that falling from 50m high is the equivalent of getting hit by a car going 112 km/h, or 70 miles per hour -- basically the same as running out into a busy freeway. If that's not a decent argument against free soloing, I'm not sure what is.
About the calculator
This is a javascript-based calculator. For you history buffs, the first version used a 10-iteration implementation of Newton's method to compute the square root needed for some of the equations, since in the days of yore, many browsers didn't support sqrt() natively. You can see the original code here: newton_sqrt.js - Square root using Newton's Method in Javascript. The falling formulae:
- The force of gravity, g = 9.8 m/s^2
Gravity accelerates you at 9.8 meters per second per second. After one second, you're falling 9.8 m/s. After two seconds, you're falling 19.6 m/s, and so on. - Time to splat: sqrt ( 2 * height / 9.8 )
It's the square root because you fall faster the longer you fall. - Velocity at splat time: sqrt( 2 * g * height )
This is why falling from a higher height hurts more. - Energy at splat time: mass * g * height
Equations verified, but also partly stolen from posters on rec.climbing - the people who wanted the splat calculator in the first place. Boggles the mind. It's all Clyde Soles fault for suggesting it.
(Disclaimer on the picture: Please, I'm not advocating soloing. I'm actually only about 10' off the deck).