School and Math

I am amazed at how fast you can forget certain things you never really cared for. Math seems to be just that for me. Last night I felt myself staring at a review worksheet for Math. Seems that me skating through class because I knew the teachers aid is a double edged sword. I need one math course for the Aviation degree and it's at the low end of the spectrum when it comes to math so I feel at ease about picking it up again.

It's not that I am bad at math; Really, I'm not. I can do arithmetic and applied math just fine. In fact, the other day someone was standing near my desk watching a news story about that Air France Airbus that crashed into the sea. During the course of the story, it speculated that the plane may have broken up in mid air because of how far and wide the debris area was. The person standing next to me muttered something under their breathe to the effect of "my god, I wonder if they were conscious when they hit the water". Oddly enough I became very curious and so I decided to do the math... and taking into account the terminal velocity of a human body, falling from 36,000 ft, you could possibly reach the altitude in which you can sustain regular respiratory function by holding your breathe for 1 to 3 minutes. Not likely, but possible I suppose, if you factor out shock and screaming for your life. Morbidly interesting.

"The engine is the heart of an airplane but the Pilot is it's soul." - Sir Walter Releigh