OK, so it was history last time, so I’m feeling like a bit of science today. So, here is your random question for today; are the ‘leaps of faith’ in the Assassin’s Creed games survivable?
Between them, the characters of Altair, Ezio and Connor* jump off a wide variety of famous buildings and monuments across the five current games, but the jump that springs most readily to mind is Ezio’s leap from the Campanile di San Marco, in St Mark’s Square, Venice, at the end of Assassin’s Creed II. It’s not the highest jump made, but it is one of the most interesting and it occurs as part of the main story campaign, meaning everyone who’s played the game through will have made the jump and it has some significance attached to it. It’s also a well-known building with plenty of information on it.
[*Interesting fact; apparently, both Altair and Ezio translate as ‘Eagle’ in some form in English, as does Connor’s Mohawk name (Ratonhnhaké;ton, according to Wikipedia) and the name of his ship, the Aquila. Connor itself translates as ‘lover of wolves’ from the original Gaelic]
The Campanile as it stands today is not the same one as in Ezio’s day; in 1902 the original building collapsed and took ten years to rebuild. However, the new Campanile was made to be cosmetically (if not quite structurally) identical to the original, so current data should still be accurate. Wikipedia again tells me the brick shaft making up the bulk of the structure accounts for (apparently only) 50m of the tower’s 98.6m total height, with Ezio’s leap (made from the belfry just above) coming in at around 55m. With this information we can calculate Ezio’s total gravitational potential energy lost during his fall; GPE lost = mgΔh, and presuming a 70kg bloke this comes to GPE lost= 33730J (Δ is, by the way, the mathematical way of expressing a change in something- in this case, Δh represents a change in height). If his fall were made with no air resistance, then all this GPE would be converted to kinetic energy, where KE = mv²/2. Solving to make v (his velocity upon hitting the ground) the subject gives v = sqrt(2*KE/m), and replacing KE with our value of the GPE lost, we get v = 31.04m/s. This tells us two things; firstly that the fall should take Ezio at least three seconds, and secondly that, without air resistance, he’d be in rather a lot of trouble.
But, we must of course factor air resistance into our calculations, but to do so to begin with we must make another assumption; that Ezio reaches terminal velocity before reaching the ground. Whether this statement is valid or not we will find out later. The terminal velocity is just a rearranged form of the drag equation: Vt=sqrt(2mg/pACd), where m= Ezio’s mass (70kg, as presumed earlier), g= gravitational field strength (on Earth, 9.8m/s²), p= air density (on a warm Venetian evening at around 15 degrees Celcius, this comes out as 1.225kg/m3), A= the cross-sectional area of Ezio’s falling body (call it 0.85m², presuming he’s around the same size as me) and Cd= his body’s drag coefficient (a number evaluating how well the air flows around his body and clothing, for which I shall pick 1 at complete random). Plugging these numbers into the equation gives a terminal velocity of 36.30m/s, which is an annoying number; because it’s larger than our previous velocity value, calculated without air resistance, of 31.04m/s, this means that Ezio definitely won’t have reached terminal velocity by the time he reaches the bottom of the Campanile, so we’re going to have to look elsewhere for our numbers. Interestingly, the terminal velocity for a falling skydiver, without parachute, is apparently around 54m/s, suggesting that I’ve got numbers that are in roughly the correct ballpark but that could do with some improvement (this is probably thanks to my chosen Cd value; 1 is a very high value, selected to give Ezio the best possible chance of survival, but ho hum)
Here, I could attempt to derive an equation for how velocity varies with distance travelled, but such things are complicated, time consuming and do not translate well into being typed out. Instead, I am going to take on blind faith a statement attached to my ‘falling skydiver’ number quoted above; that it takes about 3 seconds to achieve half the skydiver’s terminal velocity. We said that Ezio’s fall from the Campanile would take him at least three seconds (just trust me on that one), and in fact it would probably be closer to four, but no matter; let’s just presume he has jumped off some unidentified building such that it takes him precisely three seconds to hit the ground, at which point his velocity will be taken as 27m/s.
Except he won’t hit the ground; assuming he hits his target anyway. The Assassin’s Creed universe is literally littered with indiscriminate piles/carts of hay and flower petals that have been conveniently left around for no obvious reason, and when performing a leap of faith our protagonist’s always aim for them (the AC wiki tells me that these were in fact programmed into the memories that the games consist of in order to aid navigation, but this doesn’t matter). Let us presume that the hay is 1m deep where Ezio lands, and that the whole hay-and-cart structure is entirely successful in its task, in that it manages to reduce Ezio’s velocity from 27m/s to nought across this 1m distance, without any energy being lost through the hard floor (highly unlikely, but let’s be generous). At 27m/s, the 70kg Ezio has a momentum of 1890kgm/s, all of which must be dissipated through the hay across this 1m distance. This means an impulse of 1890Ns, and thus a force, will act upon him; Impulse=Force x ΔTime. This force will cause him to decelerate. If this deceleration is uniform (it wouldn’t be in real life, but modelling this is tricky business and it will do as an approximation), then his average velocity during his ‘slowing’ period will come to be 13.5m/s, and that this deceleration will take 0.074s. Given that we now know the impulse acting on Ezio and the time for which it acts, we can now work out the force upon him; 1890 / 0.074 = 1890 x 13.5 = 26460N. This corresponds to 364.5m/s² deceleration, or around 37g’s to put it in G-force terms. Given that 5g’s has been known to break bones in stunt aircraft, I think it’s safe to say that quite a lot more hay, Ezio’s not getting up any time soon. So remember; next time you’re thinking of jumping off a tall building, I would recommend a parachute over a haystack.
N.B.: The resulting deceleration calculated in the last bit seems a bit massive, suggesting I may have gone wrong somewhere, so if anyone has any better ideas of numbers/equations then feel free to leave them below. I feel here is also an appropriate place to mention a story I once heard concerning an air hostess whose plane blew up. She was thrown free, landed in a tree on the way down… and survived.
EDIT: Since writing this post, this has come into existence, more accurately calculating the drag and final velocity acting on the falling Assassin. They’re more advanced than me, but their conclusion is the same; I like being proved right :).
The Ramblings of Ix 