How an iPad survived 70mph lift off on the highway

Here's my theory. Because the case flew off at 70 miles an hour, it is likely that it's vertical drop was buffered by the air current. In other words, the flat side facing into the wind gave it just enough lift so that it could come down slow enough to prevent breakage. Then once it was on the ground, it was home-free so long as it could stay flat as it skidded to a halt. The case, at this point, absorbed all the friction.

That was lucky. If it had come down on the corner or something, the case could easily have shattered (splintered?), and the thing would have been toast for sure, pinwheeling itself into oblivion on a hard asphalt road.

No surprise, DODOcase tests these sort of things in our state of the art wind tunnel facility.

The DODO is a very aerodynamic bird.

So the sort of person who buys these cases is the sort of person who texts someone while driving BEFORE going back to check if the thing survives, and then hangs out in the emergency lane with a kid in the car while he checks if it still works? Wow, what a tool.

You were texting while driving?

A light flat object is going to slow down _drastically_ in air. This has nothing at all to do with build quality, and everything to do with the fact that it probably floated lightly to earth, and then maybe skidded a bit.

Well-written and entertaining piece, but sounds almost too good to be true (a made-for-viral PR story?) Very convenient that it flew into the emergency lane and there were no cars behind.

tl;dr- ipad in a case stayed on roof of car until driver looked down and saw he was going 70mph, then it flew off and survived.

'how' should be removed from the title.

How an object falls and what it falls on to has a lot to do with whether or not it will break. It's probably better to drop your iPad onto bitumen (asphalt) than it is to drop it onto, say, linoleum.

I don't find this surprising at all. Even with no case at all, the only worry I would have would be scratches to the screen. I suspect only a "perfect" hit would crack the screen, and I doubt there's many parts inside that could be broken from such a drop.

Two words: ballistic coefficient.

Did you write this or just find it someplace?