How far can an ant fall onto concrete without sustaining serious injury or death?
436227
Because the ant has such a large surface area comparative to its mass, it's likely that at any height on Earth when atmosphere is present that an ant will survive the fall.\n\nThere are several species of ant which are able to glide, maneuvering their body as they fall.  These are mostly tree-dwelling species in places like the Amazon rainforest.  If they happen to fall from a tree, they simply glide back to the trunk of the tree and climb back up.
1169146
At least 12 feet.\nI could be wrong though.
478612
It depends on the object.  Tests with coins have measured velocities too low to cause signifcant damage to the average human head.\n\nTerminal velocity, in this case the maximum speed a falling object will reach, depends on the shape of the object, the accelleration, and the qualities of the atmosphere.\n\nWhen an object is dropped near earth, it accellerates towards the earth at about 32 ft/sec/sec.  It goes faster and faster until the frictional drag from the air, has a slowing effect equal to the speeding effect from gravity.  From that point on it will stay approximately the same speed.  A feather has a very low terminal velocity.  A crowbar has a much higher one.  Its all about friction in air.\n\nA penny dropped near a planet without an atmosphere would accellerate toward the planet, getting faster and faster until it hit.  This scenario could be deadly for the space-suited person in the way.\n\nWater falling has an additional complication in that the air drag changes the shape of the water droplet and that in turn affect the drag.  A water droplet's changing shape on impact also affects the damage it might do a person.
1176247
It would never reach the street.  Even if you threw it horizontally as hard as you could it would not hit the street.  The lower floors of the building have setbacks, so the upper floors are set in quite a distance from the street.  It would land on the roof at least several stories up.
927462
Probably not. You will be ripped apart in cross-examination by McDo's expensive lawyers: proving the ants got there while the drink was in McD's custody is difficult.\n\nAlso there will doubtless be CCTV pictures that may call into doubt your version of the story.\n\nBut I'm sure McDo will give you your money back for the drink. As you didn't actually drink it you can't claim physical injury. And ants are not as shocking as, say, a cockroach or an amputated finger. Nor is ingestion of domestic ants known to be poisonous.\n\nBTW, legally and scientifically ants are not "bugs". Or so I am told.
1104530
ants have six legs, so if they loose one or two they are still fine. And they don't feel the same kind of hurt than we do (at least they don't have pain receptors of a type which is comparable to ours), so an ant with a damaged or even missing leg may just walk on without being too much bothered by it. Watch their behavior, it will tell you how bad they feel (give it a minute or two).\n\nSo if you just damaged one of its legs, you should let it live, because it still can live on quite nicely. If you stepped on part of its body it is probably kinder to kill it completely because it is not going to be able to live on anyway.
105453
None, ants dont live in apartments. They live in colonies.
406946
gravity, which is only effective when the object is really big compared to the speed. the gravity of a beach ball might hold ants if it moved reaaly slow, but it would basically not be moving at all. we can escape earth gravity if we move fast enough - thats how rocket ships get into space.
111044
I'm just doing all your work aren't I?  Its ok I like physics, and its good practice.  I am studying for the MCAT coming up this April (Med School).  This problem unlike the other ones that I did is a little more tricky to me.. Mostly because I don't have my physics textbooks with me.  But it would appear that you need to calculate the acceleration that is exhibited on the foot when it hits the ground.  The way I approached this problem is by using vf^2 = vi^2 + 2ad  and I solved for acceleration.  Knowing that the final velocity is zero I isolated acceleration to get and acceleration of -1024 m/s^2!!! thats huge isn't it.  that is why I'm uncertain about this problem... anyways, multiplying that using the F =ma equation I got a total force of 9216N.  But after inspecting the inital velocity its got to be right because if you convert 6.4 m/s into km/hr you get 23.04 km/hr!!! This person must be falling of a building or something!  So there it is.  Afterall didn't the question start out saying that injury can happen!?
466079
First, than ant has its skeleton on the outside, same thing as an armor, second, due to the weight and size of the ant, the air friction is higher, making it fall slower than a human being
743209
I would say that the most impossible part is when they enter the giant geode. If they were heading towards the center of the earth than when they entered the geode they would enter at the top and fall probably for hundreds of miles and die on impact. Also Giant Geode though a cool thought yeah right.
1128996
I suspect the answer is they can, but when enough of them bite you, you'd wake up and do something about it. In Houston, some years back, some awful people abandoned a newborn baby girl in a plastic bag on the side of the road. They found her covered in ant bites but alive. Doctors said that the ant bites were bad, but if the ants had not eaten through the plastic bag the child would have suffocated, so it was just as well -- they could treat ant bites.\n\nOf course, 6 months later I'm in the checkout at the grocery and see a headline on one of the "rag" newspapers: "Doctors amazed! Ants save baby girl's life!"
155607
Here's one that is over a foot long ...\n\nhttp://www.designtoscano.com/jump.jsp?itemID=4293&itemType=PRODUCT&path=1%2C2%2C66%2C69\n\nAlso, there's a several-foot long fire ant statue in Northport, Alabama
200232
depends on the kind of fall and the trajectory
528749
Humans don't generally bounce, so I'm thinking that if you drop her off the top of a skyscraper, she's going to go splat like a tomato.  Maybe she'll bounce around 10-30 centimeters due to the "recoil" effect of her hitting the ground.  Don't kill your boss; just quit your job if you are thinking about it.
156452
My cat recently slide off the car and landed on her side(not her feet) and made an awful thud. then walked away. Since she is so light, I think she didn't hit as hard as I would have and it seemed she got another life.\nThere is a high rise syndrome also. Cats that jump/fall out of apartments survive better if they fall higher than 3 stories, than 2-3 stories. They get tired relax some and spread out. Their terminal velocity is lower and then they put their legs down for landing. There is a record cat with just a cracked tooth.\nI might believe in multiple lives if I saw a cat fall 5 stories and walk away.
803826
Very very dangerous. Potentially fatal.