Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum. Here in early March of a four year old Ohio girl named Madison Gardner had just turned home with her mother, Brittany, from a shopping trip. As her mom was unloading the car, Madison walked up the front stoop to enter the house. She grabbed the door handle, turned the knob, and then suddenly went for
a ride. Like the tornado that swept Dorothy and Toto to Oz, a gale blew Madison's front door open, turning it into a sale with a tiny tot hanging on for dear life. Don't worry, Madison wasn't hurt, but the episode proves that yes, the wind can blow a person off their feet, and it's happened other times too. Also in March, organizers of the Cape Town cycle Tour, which drew thirty five thousand riders, had to cancel the event when winds topped sixty miles per hour. That's kilometers per hour,
knocking riders off their bike. But how let's start with the basics. The wind is always blowing. It can be as calm as a warm summer breeze or as destructive as a gust, and the strongest hurricane wind blows because of pressure differences in the atmosphere, The Sun hits parts of the planet at different angles, warming Earth's atmosphere unevenly. As a result, some places are warmer than others. Because of this uneven temperature, the gases in the atmosphere start
to shift and dance. Where the air temperature is hotter, air molecules expand and move upward, creating pockets of low air pressure. On the other hand, cold air temperatures press air molecules together, causing them to sink, creating areas of high air pressure. When molecules flow from high pressure areas to low pressure areas, hang onto your hat, or, as Madison abruptly learned, the door handle. The wind can blow, sometimes violently. Meteorologists use the Beaufort wind scale to measure
the force of wind. The scale starts at zero, which is a calm breeze, and ends at twelve, which is a hurricane force wind of more than sixty four miles per hour about a hundred and three kilometers per hour. Still, at what point can wind move a person? We spoke of Kate Parker, a meteorologist at the Weather Channel, and she explained that it depends on a lot of things.
The formula has to take into consideration a few variables, including the velocity of the wind, the effect of gravity, which is of course the force of attraction between a person and the earth, static friction which is the force that keeps a person anchored to the ground, and drag from the wind, which is the opposing force of static friction. Parker added, you'd also have to take into account the density of the air. Is it super moist or heavy, is it dry? Is it lighter? A person's mass and
center of gravity also need to be factored in. For instance, little Madison didn't have much mass, so the wind easily took her for a ride. The wind would have had to blow much harder to lift an adult off their feet, especially if they braced themselves, say in a steady crouch. Parker said, if you're a larger person or a heavier person, it would take a lot more force to knock you
off your feet. For a person who weighs a hundred pounds round forty five kilos, it would take a wind speed of forty to forty five miles an hour or tropical storm force to move them. Today's episode was written by Jesscelin Shields and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other curious topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio.
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