We have all heard the very popular myth about dropping a penny off the Empire State Building killing someone. It seems very plausible considering how tall the building is and how fast of a speed the penny reaches being dropped from so high up. I have heard that this myth is in fact true and that it is not possible to drop a penny of the Empire State Building and have it kill someone. So I wanted to look into it more and here is what I found.

First, there are basic measurements to know about this experiment. The height of the Empire State Building is roughly 1,250 feet. This is roughly 50 times the size of an average two-story household! Now, the general assumption people make is that a penny falling from this height would surely accelerate downwards at a rapid speed penetrating the skin of a pedestrian. This is not the case however. A penny only weighs about one gram and there is a confounding variable in this experiment and that is air resistance.

This image compares the height of the Empire State Building to other buildings

Because the penny is so lightweight it tumbles when it falls, there is a lot of air resistance that holds the penny back from reaching a maximum velocity. According to Scientific American, the faster a penny moves through the air the more air resistance it will experience which causes the drag force and force of gravity to be equal and opposite to each other. This means that once the penny reaches its terminal velocity, after that point it travels roughly at 25 mph which is not a fast enough speed to much damage at all. Even if there was no air resistance at all and New York City was evacuated, the penny STILL would not reach a fast enough speed to kill someone. Without any air resistance, the penny would reach an estimated maximum velocity of about 190 mph which sounds fast but is actually still not enough to kill you.

To put it in perspective in terms of speed and damage, this website does an excellent job with a comparison to a bullet being fired out of a gun. Basically, it demonstrates how a low powered bullet that roughly weighs the same as a penny is shot out of a gun at an initial speed of around 600 mph. That is a whole lot more than the speed of a penny when it is dropped from the Empire State Building. In fact, MythBusters did this experiment by shooting a penny out a gun at about the same speed as the bullet into Adam Savage’s hand. His reaction was that it barely even hurt. Clearly, from these experiments it is proven that dropping a penny from the Empire State Building will not kill someone. MythBusters did a great job looking at all the variables and explaining the reasoning behind their verdict in this video.

From my research, I can now say disregard this myth and know for a fact that dropping a penny from the Empire State Building will not kill somebody.