I'm thinking yellow jello. While clearly the worst of the jello flavors which might make eating your way out difficult, it will allow the most light to pass through so you can tell which way is up more easily when you are trying to get out.

Are we talking about an unbroken pool of jello, as if you'd just made a pan of it, or is it a pool full of cubes of jello? If the former, I think you run a serious risk of death on impact.

But yellow Jello is like a pool full of pee.

Choose this method for maximum likelihood of immediate death on impact. Like, would you rather dive off the diving board into water, or bellyflop?

Exactly. An unbroken block of jello in a pool would likely kill you. The surface tension would be way, way stronger than water, and you'd have to rip the jello in order to slide into it, making your impact much, much more severe. In that scenario, I take the pudding.

If we're talking discrete jello cubes, then there will be some air in between the cubes that allows for compression and cushioning at the point of impact, plus it'll be easier to swim through once you've stopped going downwards, as you won't have to be tearing through the jello with every stroke. In that case, it's the jello by far.

You could make a case for jello cubes with cool whip mixed in, as that might trap even more air deeper in the pool, further cushioning you on impact.

Does anyone not think that the jello would allow for some degree of linear compression which wouldn't necessarily make it so painful to fall on? Yes I understand that you're traveling very fast, but spreading your mass (depending on just how dense this jello is) might allow for a large degree of linear compression offsetting the pain of the surface tension (because you'd break the surface at a much slower speed than you met it at). I think a cannonball is a happy medium between pointing your toes (which really screams compound fracture of the femur at the bottom of the jello pool for me; in which case, red jello please), and the possibility of immediate death on impact landing spread eagle (blue jello here please; it'd be more soothing on the way down). It also has the added benefit of carving out a large area for you to breath. Pointing your toes and redirecting yourself horizontally seems like a good way to disorient and entomb yourself in jello. The obvious play when you get to the bottom is to create as much friction as possible to melt the jello and reduce its volume.

If I had to die in one though, make it rice pudding. Best stuff ever.

I'm not sure this is true. Kinda hard to hypothesize about swimming when we havent done it in anything but water.

I do know you could definitely get stuck. There was this one stunt on Nitro Circus where a guy jumped from 60 feet into a foam pit. His entry was clean, but he didnt come up. His friends spent 25 minutes digging him out from 20 feet in the foam pit, since he couldnt get out by himself.

Why would you expect linear compression? Jello is mostly water, and it's a continuous fluid when you first pour it into a pan. Then it gels. It doesn't increase in volume, I don't think, so there are no air pockets or anything inside that could be compressed. In order to get an appreciable linear compression response, there has to be air inside that can be compressed. Like water, I expect jello to be incompressible.

Now, if you were to just jump on to a giant cube of free standing jello, that might not be so bad, as the sides of the cube could bow out upon your impact, but in a pool, the sides of the jello are held in place by the rigid walls of the swimming pool. There's nowhere for the jello to go, so it'd tend to stay put.

We have a report from earlier ITT of someone who swam up in jello.

All,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grac6...eature=related

All,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpuUemDBz-8

Since the jello is surrounded on 5 sides, I think the shear forces in the jello will quickly override the surface tension, causing little harm. In other words, there isn't enough room for the jello to expand and absorb your force, so it will almost immediately shear, and you'll sink into it with little pain.

Water has weaker surface tension, but it will not yield to shear like jello will. Making a belly flop much more painful.

If the jello were a big gigantic cube, only resisted on 1 side (bottom), then the tensile stresses may be able to keep the surface intact without shearing of the jello. Because the jello is free to expand on 5 of 6 sides. This would be painful.

Fly,

Unless you've got a ****load of hot, bright studio lights on your pudding pool you've still got skin problems to overcome.

My comment was mostly about the financial problems. You'd need like $8,000 of pudding to plausibly survive!

Jello, because you can create some air pockets enough to get a quick breath. Assuming this is a standard pool with a deep end and a shallow end, then you can simply walk from the deep end to the shallow end and jump out. Anybody who says pudding is an idiot. At least with Jello you can survive without swimming.

This, ffs. Also, haven't any of you seen things like charity Jell-o slides? [ETA: looks like just me and Debo9.] After a little while it just sort of decomposes into liquid. It's not like you are going to be trapped in there forever.

I mean, I wouldn't want to belly-flop into it, but doing a proper dive or even a pencil dive will ensure that you just sort of slide on in, and then you can scramble out. Jumping into pudding would be like jumping into mud; I think you would actually leave a crater.

Am I crazy or is that a lot of pudding?

JELLO IS COLD.

This fact is not getting taken sufficiently into account. It will sap away your strength once you land in it, and make it harder to get out.

also, yellow Jello imho.

The jello is not being compressed in a cylinder, so it being incompressible (like water) doesn't really matter in this case.

When falling into a liquid, the most important factors are density and viscosity. The higher the viscosity the quicker you stop when you hit the surface, quicker stop = more force on your body = more likely to be hurt. The higher the density, the greater the force required to displace what you're jumping into. I don't think either would hurt you from a 10m fall.

Also, why land on your back in a pool of jello, ouch. Idiot. You could get injured doing that. do a pencil dive and arch your body at contact to allow your body yourself more distance to slow down.

If you land in the Jello ur gonna suffocate way before you ever get out of it. At least pudding you have a chance of swimming out of it even though for most of us comp nerds the odds are against us.


The real question is: which would you rather eat and then drown in?

A guy won an Ignoble prize for testing the theory that swimming in syrup is harder than water. He found the speed was exactly the same because whilst harder to stroke through it, each stroke produced more motion.

Assuming both have similar properties when swam through (and i assume it would be close once you start and mix the crap out of both so neither is a solid) then the ability to swim out of either should be the same.

Also, isnt the "hardness" of water when you hit it less to do with its density than the H-bonds of the water cells on the surface. Having a similar density (which seems to be Jelly according to an earlier post) wont ensure impact will be the same.

My gut says jelly, my head says pudding. I just have visions of falling into jelly and its low molecular bonding means you slip right down to the bottom of the pool, whereas pudding will support the impact more giving you a short distance to swim out of. But then if you land near a ladder (do diving pools have ladders normally, the only one ive ever gone to didnt) and can see it jelly wins out as you just thrash your way along the bottom to it given its transparency.

maybe u didnt see the parachute

O RLY?