> I was riding in my mom's car today behind a pickup truck and thought of an interesting question. I don't quite know exactly how to explain my question without sounding like an idiot, but I will try to get point across nevertheless.
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> Picture this scenario: You are riding in the back of a pickup truck (the truck has no tailgate, so it's just the truck's bed, then nothingness). Let's suppose that this truck is travelling at about 70 miles per hour on a completely straight, deserted highway. Suddenly, you stand up on both of your feet. Now, we're going to pretend that, upon standing, there is no wind rushing at you or away from you. Although the truck is moving, air is not hitting you. You're just there...standing up in the back of a truck travelling at 70 mph...no wind/air hitting you. You walk to the edge of the truck bed and look down. You see the road going by VERY quickly beneath the truck. Now here's my big question: Taking into account that the road is completely straight, that there are no other vehicles around, and that by standing there is (for a sci-fi kinda reason) no air hitting you, if you were to jump straight up into the air, leaving the truck to travel without you, would you get hurt upon landing on the road? Keep in mind that you jump with BOTH feet...if you jumped with one foot, followed by the other, then obviously one foot would be on the ground and the other would be in the truck, so somehow you'd get hurt/fall/etc. So yeah, taking into account all of those things, if you jumped up into the air and came down with both feet together, would you land safely?
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> ~Den-"doubt anyone will understand that"Kara

I concur with Stephen. You've set up the problem so that once you are in the air, there is no friction from the air. In short, there's nothing to slow you down. If you jump straight up, you'll wind up right back where you started- - on the edge of the truck bed.

I believe what you're actually asking is this: If you are flying through the air in a standing position at 70mph, and descend to the ground, what happens when your feet hit? Yes, you will get hurt, and quite badly. Your feet hit the ground and immediately encounter resistance from the road. That slows them down. The rest of your body meets no such resistance, and continues to move at 70mph, rotating around your feet which have now become the fulcrum of a rotational system. This basically means that your head is gonna rotate in a 90 degree arc until, still travelling at 70mph, it hits the ground. It won't be a perfect arc because your knees will bend, and your hands will probably pop out to try to catch it. This means you'll end up with asphalt buried about 1/2 inch deep in your hands, wrists, forearms, knees, thighs, chest, and face. Then you start to tumble, which is where the bones start breaking. in short, it's not gonna be fun ;)