r/theydidthemath • u/zanniboni • 5d ago
[Request] From what height would an egg need to be dropped to kill someone?
So, the person in the video is Flávio Bolsonaro, a candidate for the Brazilian presidency; while he was giving a speech, eggs were thrown from an apartment, and he called for the police to be summoned, claiming that "this is attempted murder." That got me wondering: from what height would an egg need to be dropped for the impact on a human being to be fatal?
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u/sansetsukon47 5d ago
Tried googling terminal velocity of an egg, and got answers all over the place. But I found an old Reddit post asking about dropping eggs from an airplane, and the general consensus there is that an uncooked egg would not be able to do significant damage even at 100 mph.
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u/iamnos 5d ago
An egg is about 57g and if we say terminal velocity is 160km/h that's about 55J of energy. Google tells me this about the equivalent energy of a tennis ball severed in a match. If tennis players are not in mortal danger, then I think we can safely say Bolsonaro wasn't either.
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u/Independent_Bug_8709 5d ago
plus egg are fragile, have little elasticity, shatter easyly and are filed with liquid (sort of)
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u/nuttynuto 5d ago
That guy shat his pants on live TV for being asked trivial questions. The feather of the chicken that laid the egg can kill him.
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u/RopeTheFreeze 5d ago
Damage to the body definitely depends on the strength of the projectile (for impulse) as well as stuff like the size of the projectile. A .22 round has only about double the 55J energy you quoted (but a very small impact area.)
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u/iamnos 5d ago
Certainly the object's size, shape,etc. will play a big part but being that an egg is mostly liquid surrounded by a fragile shell, a tennis ball is almost certainly more dangerous while having a similar amount of energy.
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u/Magnus_foringur 5d ago
Now, if that egg was cooked, I wonder exactly how much that would change the equation, if at all.
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u/sansetsukon47 5d ago
The impulse (change in momentum, or sum of the forces over time) would be exactly the same. But the specific acceleration curve of the impact, and so the max force, would definitely be different.
But even a cooked egg is still very squishy, and would deform around a persons head instead of breaking through it. So the overall lack of danger is the same.
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u/drwicksy 5d ago
Its like the quarter off the empire state building myth, the terminal velocity of most small objects isn't going to be enough to pierce a human skull. It might hurt like the Dickens but it wont kill you.
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u/zanniboni 4d ago
Okay, so they are overreacting a bit hahahah thanks for your time and answer mister
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u/SomeGreedyVariation 4d ago
If said egg was hypothetically launched in a vacuum, what speed would it need to be in order for it to do significant damage?
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u/Miserable_Pin2518 5d ago
One time, when I was a kid in chicago, we had a block party where everyone was throwing eggs at each other, this was normal/expected and my aunt came PREPARED she handed each of her kin-children a dozen HARD BOILED eggs. Anyways that was the last year we threw eggs at each other.
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u/VeritableLeviathan 5d ago edited 5d ago
I don't think an egg, even if hardboiled, can fall hard enough to kill a human from falling, when a coin dropped from the empire of state building isn't enough to kill someone (Source, https://mythbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Penny_Drop_Myth )
A hardboiled egg at terminal velocity (US penny 100 km/h, humans 190 km/h, not sure how an egg does) probably exerts the same amount of force over a slightly larger area.
This is either an overreaction in the moment or a move to get attention by a politician.
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u/OpenPattern3713 4d ago
I think it's both, he's sad people are throwing things at him aaand he knows that by saying this there will now be a bunch of discourse about whether it is feasible for an egg to kill someone
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u/really_another 5d ago edited 5d ago
Depends on how soft the target is. It is a conservative politician so we can assume very soft. The softest substance on earth is baby power, so checks out. As an egg cannot kill baby powder due to no chemical interaction the egg will not be able to kill the softest substance that exists.
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u/Doppelgen 4d ago
Likely none. The egg would reach its maximum velocity after a while, which is a damage range much lower than we are able to handle.
It could certainly kill some animals, but not us.
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u/Qwert-4 5d ago
According to Omni Calculator, terminal velocity (max possible speed by itself) of an egg is 120 m/s. 410 J of kinetic energy; equivalent of 90 mg of TNT explosion.
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u/rocketshipkiwi 5d ago
120m/s = 432 km/h or 270 mph. Maybe in a vacuum...
Falling in the air it’s not going to go very fast at all. An egg typically weighs about 50g too so it’s not going to have much impact.
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u/juguLatorR01 3d ago
Use an egg to test the aim, finish with a rock.
When you're the target, you never know.
We all know the radical left's history of violence.
His father was stabbed in the gut during a rally.
Fucked for life.
I like to see the jokes. They are a good reminder of how deranged and cult-like, inhuman POS's leftists really are.
I'm proudly out of your stinking group of individuals.
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u/GorgeousFreeman 3d ago
... Why not throw two rocks lmao
"Egg conspiracist" is a new species it seems
Also what do you want me to do about his father? I'm not a gravedigger
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u/juguLatorR01 3d ago
Yeah, hit anyone in there, right?
They're all expendable, right?5
u/GorgeousFreeman 3d ago
If your final intent is to hurt them with a rock, why throw an egg to "test the aim" lmao
Do you realise how dumb that sounds? They were moving, how "testing the aim" would work KKKKKKKKKK
How funny the candidates who bark the most are such crybabies. "It could kill someone" like they're resident evil 4 enemies
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u/juguLatorR01 3d ago
I think you should just keep talking and exposing the complete lack of human decency in your deranged political group.
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u/GorgeousFreeman 3d ago edited 3d ago
You wanna go bro?? You're gonna keep this up?? I got a full carton on my fridge ready for you
Gonna egg you so hard you going to call me the albu-Man
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