So while down in San Diego for a friend’s wedding over the weekend, I decided to go to Belmont Park and take in some old-school amusement park-by-the-sea action and to do silly things like eat funnel cake for lunch and then ride a roller coaster twice in a row. (I have an iron stomach but that made me a little queasy.)

I went on a ride called Chaos. It’s one of these thing that takes you up and spins you around in a could dimensions at the same time. Very disorienting thing, that is. The first minute or so of this video shows what it’s like.

(Watch an on-the-ride video here.)

Anyway, I’m up there and I feel my ipod touch working its way out of my pocket. I try to grab it but right at that moment it launches itself out of my reach and out of the ride. As I spin away, I see it smash into asphalt. I was probably 30-45 ft up at that point.

As I got off the ride, the operator says, ‘I assume you lost your iphone?’ and hands me my ipod. The Griffin case came apart and cracked on one side. I assumed the ipod was done. BUT, it powered up and works fine.

the cracked case

it still can play the new Sigur Ros album just fine

When I’m not being a blogger, I’m an engineer. I know how products like this are designed and what sort of drop specifications they have. At most, it was designed to survived a 4-5ft drop. Quite possibly it was only designed to withstand a 3ft drop. With little-to-no cushioning, even with heights like that the g-forces can easily reach into the hundreds or thousands of g’s range. The forces on an ipod dropped from 30 feet have to be really amazing. I’ve got to say I’m impressed that the screen didn’t crack and components didn’t break off the board with an impact like that.

But the lesson here isn’t that your ipod can survive a drop like this; it’s that you shouldn’t take it on the ride to begin with. I just got lucky.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 1:11 pm Posted by adrian in marginally related to music. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.