Imagine you're trapped inside a free falling elevator. Would you decrease your impact impulse by jumping during the fall? When?
Answer
As an addition to already posted answers and while realising that experiments on Mythbusters don't really have the required rigour of physics experiments, the Mythbusters have tested this theory and concluded that:
The jumping power of a human being cannot cancel out the falling velocity of the elevator. The best speculative advice from an elevator expert would be to lie on the elevator floor instead of jumping. Adam and Jamie speculated the attendant survived because the tight elevator shaft created an air cushion. This together with spring action from slack elevator cable could have slowed the car to survivable speeds.
(This myth is fueled by the story of an elevator attendant found alive but badly injured in an elevator car that had fallen down a shaft in the Empire State Building after a B-25 Medium Bomber crashed into it in 1945.)
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