Let’s say your typical Boeing 787 which seat approximately 250 people. Would it drop hard just a bit? Or just not even be fazed by it?
*edited for clarity/spelling
Let’s say your typical Boeing 787 which seat approximately 250 people. Would it drop hard just a bit? Or just not even be fazed by it?
*edited for clarity/spelling
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Probably not much. The weight of a 787 is 10x the weight of all the passengers combined, so imagine if an average adult tried to move something that weighs 1500-2000 lbs by jumping off of it. This isn’t really an ELI5 type question though tbh.
And just a friendly tip, the word is fazed*
Most probably it wouldn’t affect the plane do to the size of the plane and physics involving thrust and aerodynamics .. planes are built with redundancy incase of situations like this
Not phased.
If there’s a fly on the plane does the plane weigh more (plane+fly) or the same (just plane) since the fly is flying?
It would probably wobble a little in pitch, probably noticeably to the pilots. But drop out of the sky? Not a chance.
The force of the people jumping would go into the wings which would bend to absorb it while transferring it to the air.
Imagine what happens when you set off on a trampoline – it goes downward and springs absorb the force.
Just thinking about the physics, the plane gets pushed down by all the people using their legs to push on the bottom of the plane.
Then those people suddenly aren’t contributing any weight to the plane for a second or two while their feet aren’t touching the plane, so the plane’s lift (what keeps the plane in the air) is able to raise the plane a bit higher.
However when everyone lands again they push on the bottom of the plane again.
Seems like overall the effect is less than what some strong turbulence produces.
It won’t really faze it. The entire plane is somewhere around 260 tons. So it is at least 10-12 times the mass of all the people on the plane. So if they are able to jump half a meter, the plane will drop ~5 cm. Even incredibly minor turbulence that you might not even feel will cause drops greater than that
From personal experience in a P3 if 10 guys jump nothing much happens, but if the same guys all run repeatedly from back to front to back (pausing only long enough to reset the trim) it confuses and upsets the pilot, and amuses the flight engineer.
I heard a rumor or a tale passed on, where the pep band from stanford was known to be rowdy, and one time they occupied a whole plane and they rocketed it back and forth, though the story doesnt say how much it actually moved, I always assumed very little but the act of them trying would be terrifying
I was trying to figure out how that many people could jump out of a plane at the same thing. Or why.
If everyone on a plane were to jump at once there wouldn’t be much of an effect. The downward force generated by all those people is fair negligible considering, but the plane floor would shake a bit.
As for people jumping out of a plane, that does have an effect.
This happens all the time with paratroopers.
The pilot does notice, the plane shakes from the people moving and the plane gets lighter so it wants to tilt up.
This is far worse with cargo. When a C-130 for example drops a cargo load the sudden shift in weight causes the plane to nose up.
Knowing this is coming the pilot compensates with stick, then trims the aircraft to make it fly straight with its lower weight.
They would all get slammed into the back of the plane, some of them would get sucked into the waste water tank through the toilet. Or something like that, I think….