Why an iPhone survived a fall from a plane if it cracked when falling down stairs

Barely ten minutes had passed since Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 had taken off from Portland Airport, when its passengers were horrified to see that a section of the fuselage was thrown away, causing the cabin to depressurize. The masks came off automatically and the aircraft began a return to the runway, declaring the emergency, with the hole in the fuselage. In this nightmare, which could have ended in tragedy, an iPhone would make much of the headlines in the following days: it survived the fall from the aircraft intact.

Sean Bates, a citizen of a town near Portland, was taking a walk through his neighborhood when his eyes fell on a cell phone in a garden area next to the road. He walked over to it and found an iPhone, in airplane mode, but showing the boarding pass for the Alaska Airlines flight. Moments later, he heard in the media about the event of this flight and contacted the authorities. Just as he showed on their social networks Bates, the iPhone was in perfect condition, with some scratches. He had fallen from an altitude of 4.8 kilometers.

Specifically, it was an iPhone 14 Pro, equipped with a case and screen protector: two details that are important in the outcome of the incident. The authorities contacted the airline, which quickly located the passenger who could not find his cell phone among his belongings. The terminal was returned fully operational and with just a few scratches to its owner, while this shocking event took center stage in the media. How can a cell phone that falls from a plane in mid-flight survive unscathed?

Miraculous?

Was it a miracle it didn't break? Not so much. “Three elements have intervened so that the phone remains intact,” Luis Ángel Tejedor, Professor of Electronic Communications Engineering at the Complutense University, explains to EL PAÍS. “Newton's second law, the impact surface and the design of the device,” he lists. According to this physics expert, in theory, it does not matter whether the iPhone has fallen from a plane 5 kilometers away or from a fourth floor: “The longer the phone is subjected to the force of gravity, the longer the acceleration of gravity acts. 9.8 m/s² and it reaches a higher speed,” he explains. So, according to this, if the mobile phone falls from an airplane, it will reach the ground with greater speed than if it falls from the fifth floor.

But Tejedor refers to a second force that intervenes and slows down the speed of impact: the force of friction. “The faster the phone falls, the greater the force of friction until there comes a moment when the force of friction equals that of gravity and the object no longer accelerates; This speed is called the limit speed,” he explains. In this way, once the height from which the object falls is sufficient to reach the limit speed, it does not matter how much higher the height is, because the object will not accelerate any more. So, in reality, whether the phone falls from a building or from an airplane is irrelevant.

Added to this law is the mass and surface area of ​​the object: “In an object with a lot of surface area and little mass, such as a ball or a feather, the force of gravity is small and friction easily equalizes it at speeds that are not very high.” . At the opposite extreme we would find an object with a lot of mass and little surface area, like a bullet. The iPhone, flat and light—especially in its latest versions—“glides” more easily, reaching a relatively low maximum speed.

Lucky landing

But the laws of physics, by themselves, would not be enough to explain what is inexplicable to the reasoning of a mortal: just a few scratches on a mobile phone that falls from a height of 5 kilometers. This iPhone was lucky or, rather, its owner was extremely lucky: the device fell on a garden area right next to a road. The grass made the consequences minimal. Beyond common sense, science comes into play again, this time with kinetic energy, as the Complutense professor explains: “This energy, at the moment of impact, has to be dissipated in some way. If the phone falls on grass, it will be dedicated to moving the soft grass, but if it falls on cement or asphalt, which are rigid, the energy will be dedicated to deforming the different parts of the mobile, destroying it.”

In this sense, mobile manufacturers address the thorny question of impacts in two ways. On the one hand, they can make the mobile phone completely disassemble: who doesn't remember the first Nokias jumping into a thousand pieces, but without suffering a single damage. On the other hand, they can bet on durability and resistance, as is the case of the model in question. “The iPhone 14 Pro, a particularly durable model in terms of falls, has a space steel chassis,” explains José Hernández, from the mobile repair center, Europe3G.

Hernández places emphasis on another element, in addition to luck, science and the quality of the materials: the additional protection it had: “As seen in the images, the device had a protective case and a glass screen protector. tempered, which further reinforces all the durable construction that it has in itself.” In this aspect, Tejedor agrees, who, beyond the current resistance of high-end mobile phones, assures: “I would put a case on it.”

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