http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/wonder/index.html

Will a penny dropped off the eiffel tower kill you

The myth "A penny dropped off the Eiffel Tower will fall with enough velocity to kill a person" means that, if a person was to drop a penny from the Eiffel Tower or a taller building will gain enough velocity that the penny will go through the body like a bullet and kill a person. The myth may have originated in cities where people believed that the towers were so high that things dropped from it could kill people. Also it could have originated in a physics class because a penny dropped from that height without air friction probably could gain enough velocity to kill someone. There are multiple perspectives to this myth because some say the penny is dropped off the empire state building and some say the Eiffel Tower. That is the meaning of the myth "A penny dropped off the Eiffel Tower will fall with enough velocity to kill a person".

 

The reason this myth has been circulating in urban legends so long is because there is a lot of scientific content in it. For example if a penny was dropped from the Eiffel Tower and there was no air friction acting upon it, the myth could be quite possible. Like University of Virginia Physics Professor Louis Bloomfield said " They're thinking of a world without air." This thought is based off the term "free fall" which means a object falls and the only force acting upon it is gravity.

But overall the myth is not true and a penny dropped from the Eiffel tower cannot kill a person. This is because the pennies are not very aerodynamic and cause a lot of air friction when they fall which greatly slows down the penny. Also the penny wouldn't even break the skin of a person if the penny was dropped from the Empire State Building which is 264 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower. One last thing is that the penny reaches its terminal velocity " the fastest speed an object can go" at 50 feet and no matter how much higher the penny is dropped it still won't hurt anyone.

Sources: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3131332&page=1, http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/quiz/money/money.html, and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/wonder/index.html

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3131332&page=1

http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/quiz/money/money.html