Can a Penny or any coin dropped from a tall Skyscraper kill you?

Can a Penny or any coin dropped from a tall Skyscraper kill you?

You’ve probably heard people say how if you drop a penny off the top of the Empire State Building, it will accelerate to such a speed that if it struck someone, it would kill them. This simply isn’t true at all, not by a long shot.

A penny only weighs about a gram and it tumbles as it falls. Because of the tumbling and the light weight, there's so much air resistance that the penny never really gathers that much speed before it hits its terminal velocity. A gram of weight traveling at a relatively slow speed might hurt a little if it hit you on the head, but it's not going to kill you.

Pennies are flat, so they experience a lot of air resistance, and they are light, so it doesn't take much drag to counteract their weight. Thus, if hurled off a skyscraper, pennies achieve their terminal velocity after only about 50 feet (15 meters) of descent. After that point, they flutter to the ground at a measly 25 mph (40 kmph).

So where does the penny myth come from? It might have something to do with the psychological impact of skyscrapers. Maybe standing on tall buildings gives people an exaggerated sense of their own power.

Debunked!