Q: Would you rather land on water or marshmallow?

[tiny-tim]

rupture force and viscosity

It is point number 3 on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress-strain_curve" (Figure 1). Basically, it is the point where the material breaks, complete failure.

So, to measure it you would push on a marshmallow until it failed and measure the force and the area that you were pushing.

ah … got it!

so below the rupture force, the marshmallow will act to some extent like a spring, returning MattSimmons upward with a fairly high overall deceleration,

but beyond the rupture force, the marshmallow will continuously give way, providing a relatively safe steady viscous deceleration?

hmm … so now we also need to know the viscosity of marshmallow?

and presumably it would help to be covered with chocolate, or with some other material that will reduce marshmallow drag? ​

 

[Ranger Mike]

those marshmallows are tuffer than I thought. got a bag of Wal-Mart Great Value Marshmallows..these are the biggies..weigh 6 grams, 3 mm tall 30.2 mm diameter
did the measurements when they were 64 degrees..were in trunk over night
I stacked various washers on top until one side of the marshmallow wall gave in..I was not yet able to load the marshmallow to blow it out.total collapse.
in fact , I was only able to load 540 gram max load and the darn thing still did not fail to return to 3 mm height after load. I have to find some bar stock of sufficient weight to mash it
the height is from edge of a dished washer to the desk top and measured with a pocket scale ..note i used the slider bar on the pocket scale


the following was with washers perfectly balance

load - height mm
0 - 3.0
50 - 2.8
85 - 2.4
102 - 2.2
150 - 2.1
215 - tilt, side wall failure


I has to steady the washers by holding them so side wall would not collapse

load - height in mm
0 - 2.2
140 - 2.0
210 - 1.8
280 - 1.7
540 - 1.3
824 - 1.2

 

[Dale]

those marshmallows are tuffer than I thought. got a bag of Wal-Mart Great Value Marshmallows..these are the biggies..weigh 6 grams, 3 mm tall 30.2 mm diameter
did the measurements when they were 64 degrees..were in trunk over night
I stacked various washers on top until one side of the marshmallow wall gave in..I was not yet able to load the marshmallow to blow it out.total collapse.
in fact , I was only able to load 540 gram max load and the darn thing still did not fail to return to 3 mm height after load. I have to find some bar stock of sufficient weight to mash it
the height is from edge of a dished washer to the desk top and measured with a pocket scale ..note i used the slider bar on the pocket scale


the following was with washers perfectly balance

load - height mm
0 - 3.0
50 - 2.8
85 - 2.4
102 - 2.2
150 - 2.1
215 - tilt, side wall failure


I has to steady the washers by holding them so side wall would not collapse

load - height in mm
0 - 2.2
140 - 2.0
210 - 1.8
280 - 1.7
540 - 1.3
824 - 1.2

How big are the marshmallows? 1" in diameter by 1" tall? If so, using 215 g/in² (most marshmallows will probably fail this way rather than rupture), and a surface area of .7 m² (good for 74 kg adult male, so a little conservative for a 100 kg man) we get a revised force of 2300 N which is a little more than double my previous guesstimate. So 180 kJ/2300 N = ~ 80 m. Multiply by a factor of 2.5 for safety and call it 200 m of marshmallows.