Here’s why an iPhone that survived a fall from an airplane will crack if it takes a tumble on the stairs

Just 10 minutes after Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 had taken off from the Portland airport, its passengers were horrified to find that a section of the fuselage had ejected, causing the cabin to depressurize. Masks were automatically released, and the aircraft began its return to the runway, alerting authorities an emergency was taking place, with a gaping hole in the body of the plane. Amidst this nightmare, which could have ended in tragedy, one wayward iPhone would make headlines throughout the following days: it survived the fall from the aircraft, intact.

Sean Bates, a resident of a town near Portland, was strolling through his neighborhood when his eyes caught sight of a cell phone in a landscaped roadside area. He went to pick it up and found that it was an iPhone in airplane mode, showing on its screen a boarding pass for an Alaska Airlines flight. Moments later, he saw media reports on what had happened to that flight, and he got in contact with the authorities. Just as Bates showed on his social media, the iPhone was in perfect condition, with a few scratches. It had fallen from an altitude of nearly three miles.

It was, to be precise, an iPhone 14 Pro, equipped with a case and screen protector: two details that are important when it comes to the phone’s eventual fate. Authorities contacted the airline, which quickly located the passenger, who had been unable to find his cell phone among his belongings. The device was returned, fully operational and with only a few scratches, and it stole the subsequent spotlight in the bizarre event. How can a cell phone that falls off a plane mid-flight survive unscathed?

Miracle?

Was it a miracle that it didn’t break? Not so fast. “Three elements came into play for the phone to remain intact,” Luis Ángel Tejedor, a professor of electronic communications engineering at Complutense University of Madrid, told EL PAÍS. “Newton’s second law, the impact surface and the device’s design,” he says. According to the physics expert, in theory, it makes no difference whether the iPhone had fallen from a plane three miles away or from a fourth floor: The longer the phone is subjected to the force of gravity, the longer the acceleration of 32.15 ft/s² and the greater the speed is that it reaches,” he explains. According to this, if the phone falls from a plane, it will reach the ground with more speed than if it falls from a fifth floor.

But Tejedor invokes a second force that intervenes and slows down the speed of impact: the frictional force. “The faster the phone falls, the greater the frictional force, until the moment arrives in which the frictional force equals the force of gravity, and the object no longer accelerates; this speed is called the limit speed,” he explains. So once the height from which the object falls is sufficient to reach the limit speed, it doesn’t matter how much higher the actual height of the fall is, because the object will not accelerate any further. So it’s true: whether the phone falls from the height of a building or an airplane is irrelevant.

One must also take into account the mass and surface area of the object: “For an object with a lot of surface area and little mass, such as a ball or feather, the force of gravity is slight and friction will easily match it at velocities that are not very high,” says Tejedor. At the opposite extreme would be an object with a lot of mass and little surface area, like a bullet. The iPhone, flat and light — particularly in its latest editions — “glides” more easily, reaching a relatively low limiting speed.

A lucky landing

But the laws of physics alone would not be enough to explain what is inexplicable in the eyes of mere mortals: a phone that emerged from a five-kilometer fall with just a few scratches. This iPhone was lucky, or rather, its owner was: the device fell on a landscaped roadside area. The grass allowed it to emerge with minimal consequences. That seems like common sense, but once again, the situation can be better explained with science, this time, kinetic energy. The Complutense professor explains: “Energy, at the moment of impact, has to dissipate somehow. If the phone falls on grass, it will be used to displace the soft plant matter, but if it falls on cement or asphalt, which are rigid, that energy will be spent on deforming the different parts of the phone, destroying it.”

Cell phone manufacturers deal with the thorny issue of impact in two ways. On technique is that they can make the phone easy to break apart: who doesn’t remember the first Nokia exploding into a thousand pieces, without any lasting damage? On the other, they can go for durability and resistance, as is the case with the model in question. “The iPhone 14 Pro, a particularly durable model in terms of falls, has a space-ready steel chassis,” explains José Hernández, from mobile repair center Europa 3G.

Hernández also points out another element, in addition to luck, science and quality of materials: the additional protection the phone was wearing. “As you can see in the images, the device had a protective case and a tempered glass screen protector, which further reinforces its durable manufacturing.” On this point Tejedor agrees. Even if your phone comes from the current crop of fall-resistant, high-end models, he says: “I would put a case on it.”

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