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A physicist has explained the mystery of how an iPhone fell from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at 16,000 feet and still worked.
While many Apple users will be familiar with their devices shattering from a simple 10-foot drop or down a flight of stairs, whether or not the phone actually works depends on the speed of the phone and the angle at which it is dropped. or not broken.
When a cell phone falls from waist height, it hits the ground at about 10 miles per hour and because there is no wind resistance to slow the fall, it will be damaged; the opposite is true when the iPhone fell out of the plane.
An Apple iPhone survived a 16,000-foot fall from Alaska Airlines Flight 1282
Physicist Duncan Watts said that air resistance from falling from the Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft (pictured) slowed the phone’s acceleration and that the bush it fell on cushioned the fall and protected the phone from damage
Duncan Watts, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo’s Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, said air resistance slowed the phone to 50 miles per hour and the bush it landed in acted as a cushion to protect it from damage.
“If the phone is dropped with the screen facing the ground there is quite a bit of drag, but if the phone falls straight up and down there is a lot less,” Watts said. The Washington Post.
“In reality, the phone would fall over quite a bit and get quite a bit of wind, essentially creating an upward force.”
Watts clarified that a phone falling from that height would be traveling at about 50 to 100 miles per hour, but Watts said the speed was probably closer to about 50 miles per hour because the phone was likely tumbling through the air .
The maximum speed could only be achieved when the phone’s screen was perpendicular to the ground.
“The basic answer is air resistance,” Watts told the Post. “I think the counterintuitive thing here is that an iPhone falling out of the sky doesn’t end up moving as fast because of air resistance.”
Washington resident Sean Bates found the iPhone in a bush near Portland, Oregon, where the plane took off.
Washington resident Sean Bates found the fully intact and undamaged Apple iPhone under a bush while walking around looking for items that may have fallen from the plane.
Watts said if the iPhone had landed on the pavement instead of in the bush it would have caused serious damage to the phone.
Instead, Watts said because the iPhone fell on damp ground, “…I could see it had about an inch of cushion.”
He added, “Maybe that’s what it feels like to plop down on a chair.”
This was the second iPhone found after it fell from the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 plane.
Bates told his followers on X that when he found the phone, it was still intact, unlocked and on airplane mode.
The screen showed an Alaska Airlines baggage claim email with the flight number, which has since been turned over to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The NTSB asked citizens to search for objects that fell from the plane after a door plug suddenly tore off the Boeing 737 Max 9 just minutes after it took off from Portland, Oregon, on Friday.
They asked the public for help to give them an idea where to look for the door plug, which was later found in a teacher’s backyard near Portland.
Several other items in the plane were sucked out, including headrests, a seat back and a tray table.
The Federal Aviation Administration has grounded all Boeing 737 Max 9s until it is “confident they are safe,” affecting about 171 planes worldwide.