Some people just do not grasp the full scale of a 40-metre drop
Published:
April 7, 2014 at 6:34pm
So we shall have to put it into perspective by making one of those visual comparisons with something they understand.
Listen up, those of you who still believe that Erin Tanti somehow jumped off a 40-metre height, landed on a rock and survived with a couple of very minor fractures to the ribs.
FORTY METRES IS THE HEIGHT OF A 13-STOREY BUILDING.
When you fall or jump off the roof of a 13-storey building, you DIE. Not only do you die, but your body is so badly smashed up that it has to be scraped off the ground.
I trust this puts the situation into perspective.
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The Preluna hotel.
For those not familiar with the Preluna Hotel, it’s the tallest building in this photo.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140407/local/car-owner-compensated-for-storm-damage.513967
Just for comparison the Preluna Hotel is 52m high so it means that instead not jumping off the roof but two balconies down.
Is that survivable?
Those who believe he jumped and survived probably believe in the supernatural.
A friend accidentally fell off a tall building (not 40m) and he survived – BUT, and it’s a big but, he was in hospital for very many months, received treatment for years, and even now, many years later, he still can’t walk properly.
Those who believe his story are just plain stupid.
If Tanti is to be believed, he was going at 100km/h at the point of impact.
Crash tests indicate critical internal injuries, (basically all insides explode), all limbs broken and visible coagulation of blood under the skin, the eyes shot black.
And that’s in a car with airbags, inertia seat belts and crumple zones lengthening deceleration time, decreasing G forces.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TNFDeK6GLE
If you refer to De Haven’s paper (as republished in “Injury Prevention” in 2000 [free access]) the human body can withstand brief periods of deceleration of up to 200g (or 2000m/s/s.
If we use these numbers (v = 0, u = 28.28 m/s and a = -2000m/s/s) it means that Tanti’s deceleration happened over at the very least 0.4m. So, for Tanti to be alive, the rock he landed on would have to have an impression of his body at least 40cm deep. A real life Wile E Coyote.
As Jozef points out, at decelerations much above that you’re guaranteed to have “your insides explode”. What happens usually is that, with everything moving, your aorta (the big main artery coming out of the heart) comes under strain from various different angles. This essentially rips it apart. You bleed out instantly. This injury would be the result of the sudden deceleration itself and would happen even if there were no impact to speak of.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/57317125
The original tower, not the recent extension. I think this clarifies.
The idiots are on Times of Malta’s Facebook page en masse again, commenting away and blaming everyone but the poor teacher.
You are so right, Daphne. And besides rocks are very hard and pointed. The body would be even more smashed and deformed than when the body falls on flat ground.
There is no person who is more blind than s/he who has eyes but refuses to see. And those who do not want to face the truth will never accept it, even if it hits them in the face.
What shallowness. The people who still show support to this Tanti person are as shameless as he is.
And they hide behind the notion ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ when guilt is obvious from the available facts. They hardly see that this was actually a premeditated crime: money, passport and all kept safely locked in his car while he got out of it to push her over.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2598934/Infatuated-woman-teacher-26-took-16-year-old-pupil-hotel-break-sex-school-training-weekend.html
The fact that he was lying on a rock in a very strange pose had already raised some questions.
How did he fall so far away from the cliff edge, when gravity drags you down?
If he were so badly injured, then how did he get on that rock where he was found? Had he landed on it, he would have died instantly.
I believe he was well enough to climb it and to dramatize or rather stage another act which came to his sick mind after plan A failed.
Just for reference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OgJjsOGx8I
The mind boggles. So Miss Zahra falls into a tree and dies instantly. Mr Tanti shoots down and slams into a jagged rock, losing his clothes somewhere on the way down, and walks out of hospital three days later.
Next thing, he’ll be performing in Jesus Christ Superstar.
I have worked out the speed reached in falling 40m: 28.3 m/s or 101.9 km/h.
The workings of democracy under Labour, where the Police hide important information about a minister from the press:
http://maltarightnow.com/?module=news&at=Il-Ministru+Owen+Bonnici+jtajjar+%26%23380%3Bew%26%23289%3B+%26%23289%3Buvintur&t=a&aid=99855550&cid=19
I stand to be corrected.
It takes a 50/60 kilo weight about 5 seconds to cover 25m, so it must have taken Tanti about 10 seconds to cover the 40m drop. That is over 20 miles per hour, enough to have turned him into a hamburger.
Lock him up.
No, it takes 2.8 seconds to fall 40 metres and the speed reached is much higher than 20 miles per hour. It does not depend on the weight as all objects fall with the same acceleration. The final speed reached depends only on the vertical height.
10m per second squared.
One can use this formula:
v (squared) =u(squared) +2as where v = final velocity in m/s, u = initial velocity (m/s), a = accelaration due to gravity (10m/s/s) and s = dfistance (m)
so V2 = 0 + (2x10x40) = 800 and v = 28m/s or 102Km/hr
At this velocity, the kinetic energy is very near 31kilojoules and if one estimates that on hitting a rock the body came to rest within 10 cm, the force on impact would be 310Kilo newtons or the equivalent of 31 TONS of weight or the weight of two buses.
Now if anyone can really believe that having two buses on your body would result in a just a couple of broken ribs, then we would really have a superman amongst us.
No. Not a hamburger.
More like Bolognese sauce.
There should be no question that Erin Tanti is beyond the pale.
Yes, we still have a load of dimwits who keep telling us that we should not judge him because he may have been under the spell of a 15-year-old temptress.
You know, because a 15-year-old today apparently acts older than a 15-year-old of the past.
Then again, they want us to believe that a 23-year-old man is still a boy or teenager. I would have thought that logic dictates that if a 15-year-old girl today is as mature as an 18- or 19-year-old of yesteryear, then a 23-year-63d of today is mature beyond his already adult age. But why let logic get in the way?
If any of these Erin cheerleaders wants to form a normal and coherent view of the differences in the brain of an adolescent (such as the victim in this sorry story) and the brain of an adult (such as the perpetrator), they could do worse than having a look at any one of these:
http://teenbrain.drugfree.org/science/growth.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/teenage-brain1.htm
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-still-under-construction/index.shtml
Reminds me of a Maltese saying: Ir-raġel dejjem bandiera bajda.
The idea that a woman should always be considered as the guilty one in such an affair is apparently still very much present – even, dishearteningly, amongst Mr Tanti’s teenage admirers.
Speaking as 16 year old here.
‘You know, because a 15-year-old today apparently acts older than a 15-year-old of the past.’
Yes, quite frankly they do. We now have shocking images and videos at our fingertips, and inevitably we push ourselves to mature faster, and it’s unfortunately a natural occurrence too.
Fact of the matter is, a 15 year old nowadays has a lot more in common with a 23 year old than 30/40 years ago. You can all deny it, and call me a child with a flawed view on things, however just because I’m looking at things from another side doesn’t mean that my side is any less valuable than yours.
I await the patronizing comments.
[Daphne – I won’t patronise you, but I will state the obvious. Unlike you, who have experience only of one lot of 15-year-olds (yours), ancient people like me have experience of several batches of 15-year-olds, starting from when we were 15 in 1980. And you are quite, quite wrong: it is actually the opposite of what you said, and today’s 15-year-olds are much, much less grown-up and mature than yesterday’s. In fact, every generation of 15-year-olds is increasingly less mature and childish than the previous. In the not so distant past, when I was a child, 15-year-old girls married, had children and looked after them and their home. My generation of 15-year-olds were certainly not treated as children. That was because we were largely expected to fend for ourselves from much earlier than that. Our mothers didn’t drive, so we got around by bus from the age of 9 (or walked), we looked after our younger siblings, we entertained ourselves, and our parents considered anything to do with school or homework to be no concern of theirs, but ours and the school’s. But over the years, excessive sheltering and vastly decreased freedom and independence has kept teenagers extremely childish. You are a case in point: your comment reveals the mental and emotional age of 13, not 16.]
Spot on, Daphne. Today’s teens think that because they are more sexually aware then they are more mature.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Earlier generations, and I’m talking baby boomers here, married young, had children, educated themselves, held down steady jobs etc. when they were no older than the so-called teacher of Lisa-Marie.
Many of today’s ‘youngsters’ of that age nowadays are still ‘screwing around’ (no pun intended) with banal activities to ‘find themselves.’
How tiring!
30 years ago we may not have had internet at the push of a button but education was still there to inform about sex – Form one and form two had kids aged eleven and twelve respectively and those were the specific years where students, at the time, were taught about the birds and the bees in full detail.
This aside, information circled around magazines which many parents used to buy to bind in books – ‘the Book of Life’ was a special edition in the late 70’s and early 80’s and there’s a lot on sex and sexual intercourse – most kids my age back then knew what sex was all about through the information available in books we had at home .
We were informed long before science class at school.
AIDS broke out in the late 70’s and early 80’s and the first filmstar to die as a result of HIV which led to his AIDS was Rock Hudson – he was gay.
A relative was in hospital in 1989 and the patient next door died of Aids – he was Maltese – a gay person who had multiple relationships with different men.
We knew that AIDS was acquired through a lot of sex with a lot of different partners.
We had teachers of different ages and sexes but an over friendliness with teachers was forbidden because it was simply not allowed. Kids from the other schools nearby used to come over to meet us but there were strict rules at our school – no kids from other schools were allowed in or anywhere near the school grounds – to avoid sex on the school premises.
In the 80’s Xandir Malta was full of films or rather a series of films that had a lot of sex as their main subject. I was not allowed to watch ‘The Thorn Birds’ for example – a film about forbidden sex between a priest and a young girl – but the children in my class were allowed to watch and I knew all about the film as they spoke about sex better than all of you youngsters look at it.
Many students in the late 80’s and early 90’s went through a work phase – they worked in summer before going to sixth form or university. Many a time, at the offices we were at, people would boast about the latest porn films they watched on video cassettes they’d pass to other employees.
The 80’s and 90’s weren’t internet focussed however the sex has always been there. The difference about it today is that you all seem to know nothing about it as your thinking clearly shows there’s no ounce of respect towards health, self-esteem and the human body.
Kids in the 80’s and 90’s knew a lot about sex and what’s more is that they had even learnt how to have confidence, self-esteem and self-respect – something which most of you don’t even know anything about.
Many of you do not have respect for yourselves and most of you lack respect for others. Your views on life is totally warped – how you dare talk about people being suicidal is beyond me. You can’t talk about life properly, how on earth can you philosophise about death and people you think are suicidal?
So how can you classify yourselves as mature?
His 40m free-fall would have taken 2.9 seconds before impact, hitting the ground at more than 100km/h.
Assuming that his weight is around 70kg, the force of impact would have been tremendous and roughly works out as 14 times the bite of an adult great white shark.
Unless of course, there was something in that concoction of alcohol and aspirin that made him defy the laws of physics.
He does come across as being full of hot air, so maybe he floated.
For comparison’s sake, one acquaintance of mine fell from one storey onto his feet and literally shattered the bones at the point of contact.
Clearly Tanti is superhuman if he can still walk and use his limbs well after falling the distance of 13 storeys.
Here are a few cases for comparison’s sake:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140316/local/man-critical-after-fall.510909 Critically injured, fell off ladder
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120421/local/difficult-rescue-as-man-falls-off-cliff.416367 Critically injured, with head injuries, fell off (lower) cliff
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121218/local/Man-falls-down-shaft.449992 Critically injured, 4 storeys
Incidentally, if Erin Tanti fell, as opposed to jumped, his head, being the heavier part of his body, would probably have been the first to make contact with the ragged ground beneath.
The statue of Christ the redeemer in Brazil is 38 metres high including pedestal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cristo_Redentor_Rio_de_Janeiro_4.jpg
Does everybody get it now?
Mr Loporto, it’s accelleration and terminal velocity you should be after.
The place along the cliffs where the fall happened is not a sheer drop, Daphne. It is not necessarily a simple 40m drop. It depends how far out you jump. If you don’t leap too far, you will not fall 40m unimpeded.
You will hit rock quicker, and then roll/bounce/whatever until you land somewhere which stops you. I think the media reports are being simplistic when they say ’40m fall’.
Having said that, before you attack me, I am not saying that Erin definitely didn’t jump. He probably walked down, as you say. But then how did he break his ribs?
[Daphne – ‘Attack me’. So tiresome. ‘Attack’ does not have the same meaning as ‘tattakka’. In English, it would involve something like an axe. It most certainly does not mean criticism of a person, however harsh, though it can mean extreme criticism of, say, government policy. You have played devil’s advocate from the outset of this story, and as it evolves in a way that makes Tanti’s intentions and involvement clear, you merely change your arguments and your devil’s advocate defence of him.]
Tanti most definitely did not drop down the cliff face. He was found on a rock tens of metres away from the cliff.
True, attack is the wrong word. I meant something on the lines of ‘before you dismiss my argument/question’. I honestly have no particular interest in ‘defending’ him – I do not know him.
Just found it hard, from the outset, to believe that he’d actually kill her. I still don’t believe so, but we will see how things evolve further in court, of course. I still think it was a joint suicide.
[Daphne – More fool you, then, and here’s hoping that you’re over 18 and not raising children of your own. Exactly what do you think a murderer is: somebody with horns and blood seeping out of his eyes. Murderers look like everyone else, bar the few exceptions.]
Did O. J. Simpson look like a murderer?
You don’t believe he killed her because you don’t want to believe something so horrible is possible.
Tanti’s lies about what happened at Dingli cliffs should be enough to tell you what you don’t want to know. Why would anyone lie about jumping off a cliff and refuse to answer questions if the truth were on his side?
Does anyone recall the 8pm news on TVM on the 19th March, where it was said that Erin tanti walked down a footpath so as not to leave Lisa alone after having fallen down? Or am I imagining things?
What I remember hearing was it being said that “iz-zewg zghazagh instabu fl-irdum ta’ Had-Dingli, imma sfortunatament, it-tfajla ttellghat mejta”. I believe it was Ruth Amaira reading the news that day.
I do not recall hearing that Tanti walked down a footpath, but I do recall my first reaction about him, that he did not fall/jump and survive, because it was impossible, especially since he was on a boulder quite a way away from the cliff. I was, in fact, quite surprised to read shortly afterwards that foul play was ruled out, because probable vital evidence would have been overlooked at the crime scene.
Yes. That was my impression too. He was found on a ledge some distance away after having gone down to look for her. The actual wording was “mhux eskluz illi…”
Ian, the broken ribs are probably caused by him slipping on the walk down – especially if he was under the influence of alcohol, if he did drink that is. Because I doubt he ever swallowed that aspirin!