Stunning Physics Of That Life-Saving Catch Of A Child By A NYC Bus Driver!

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That New York City bus driver hero who caught a 7-year-old girl in midair when she plunged three stories from the window of a housing complex, was dealing with some pretty unbelievable forces of physics it turns out! Stephen St. Bernard, 52, made that heroic catch, now seen around the world, but Louis Bloomfield, a physicist at the University of Virginia, analyzed it & came up with these stunning facts! “The girl fell about 25 feet, which took about 1.25 seconds. The man stopped her fall in about 3 or 4 feet, which took about 0.1 second, depending on the stopping distance and how he supported her. So, she accumulated downward momentum over about 1.25 seconds and gave that momentum to the man (and ground) in about 0.1 seconds. For Bernard to bring the girl’s body to a stop in one-twelfth of the time she spent accelerating toward him — that’s 0.1 seconds of stopping time, compared to 1.25 seconds of falling time — he had to exert an upward force 12 times greater than her (downward) weight. (Pushing upward is how you slow a falling body to a stop.) That means, “If she weighs 50 pounds, the man and ground must push up with an average of 12 times that force, or 600 pounds. In a pinch, a man could exert an upward force of 600 pounds briefly, but it would likely hurt and could cause injury,” Bloomfield said. “And the girl could tolerate that much upward force briefly, if distributed properly.” Indeed, Bernard sustained a torn tendon in his shoulder, and the 7-year-old was treated for minor injuries. But the catch may well have saved her life.