The tallest building in the worlds elevator failing

[Diceroller]

If the elavator failed completely and I mean completely all emergency brake mechanisms all cables everything and it just dropped would the people inside experience weightlessness? If the the drop is too short how high would a building have to be in order for you to experience weightlessless (if the elavator failed as I mentioned above) for a fair time? There must be an equation somewhere that has the Height x weight x speed = weightlessness which would give us a hypothetical though accurate answer?

[mollykins]

It would depend if the terminal velocity was fast enough (I think) . . .

[bibblebub]

Ignoring air resistance, you would be falling with the same acceleration as the lift (i.e. g) and so, in the spatial frame of the lift, you would be weightless.

[Jemisa]

I don't think anyone would live to let us know, Dice.
(but what a ride Alton Towers move over)

jem

[beso]

Ignoring friction, the passengers would weightless from the first moment of failure.

Any body that is allowed to accelerate unhindered under the force of gravity bevomes weightless.

[heathfield]

If a lift falls, the advice is to lie on the floor. Never figured out how you could do that once you were floating in mid-air.

[johne1892]

I'm afraid heathfield that lying on the floor would just be delaying the inevitable. If you fell off the side of the building lying flat as you hit the ground isn't going to help much.

I think Mythbusters did a good test on a free falling lift and found that you've got barely no chance of survival (if it was total failure as asked above)

[jomifl]

There is no simple equation that would give the answer you want as there are too many unknown variables. The lift falling down the shaft would be like a piston in a tube so the rate of descent would depend on how good a fit it was and how quickly the air trapped underneath could escape. If the air couldn't escape easily it would act like a damped spring and you could arrive gently at the bottom unharmed. You would begin in free fall and apparent gravity would return progressively the closer you got to the bottom. The more realistic scenario is that you would experience almost free fall all the way to the bottom where you would experience death.

[Quizmonster]

Death in these circumstances is sometimes jokingly said to be caused by "deceleration sickness".

[Hippy]

As you and your hapless companions hurtle downward, with the walls, ceiling and floor of the lift also hurtling down, stand on those conveniently placed bathroom scales. You may well find that your apparent weight, with respect to the lift, was significantly reduced as both you and the theoretical lift were in free fall.

The fact that you (and the lift) were falling is evidence that you still have weight and when you eventually hit the ground, at whatever terminal velocity, your weight will have been augmented by momentum gained by the fall.

Squish! Gather the pieces and hoover up the liquids. There will still be weight.

The so called weightless flights in planes are simulations created by the plane accelerating downward slightly faster than the rate of free fall, and the illusion is created as the passengers float inside the plane. The natural frame of reference, the plane walls, floor, ceiling etc., are actually moving downwards slightly faster that the people, but they see the plane insides as part of the firm and solid foundation of their world, and therefore experience "weightlessness", whereas nothing of the sort is true. They still weigh just the same as they did before, it is a matter of relative motion.

Gravity acts on stuff on Earth such that a body will fall at an increasing rate, such that after the first second it will be going down at 32 feet per second and it will add a further 32 feet per second to the speed at the end of each further second travelled. There is a natural cut off where air resistance inhibits further acceleration.

Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall for the formulae for working this out.