“A penny dropped from a skyscraper could kill someone.”

• Objects dropped or thrown from tall buildings have killed people — but documented fatalities involve far heavier or denser items (bricks, bottles, chunks of masonry, sandbags, shopping carts), not coins, so the general danger of 'falling objects from height' lends the claim surface plausibility.
• A penny at terminal velocity (~11 m/s / 25 mph) hitting an eye could plausibly cause serious eye injury, and freak outcomes (e.g., a startled pedestrian stepping into traffic) are not physically impossible — so 'could kill' cannot be reduced to literally zero probability.
• Physicist Louis Bloomfield (University of Virginia), who experimentally dropped pennies from balloons and in wind tunnels, noted that a penny falling perfectly edge-on in still, non-tumbling flight would reach a somewhat higher speed than a fluttering one — an idealized worst case that the folk claim implicitly assumes.
• Some jurisdictions and building operators (e.g., observation-deck safety barriers and anti-throwing rules on skyscrapers) act as though dropped small objects are hazardous, reflecting institutional caution.

• A US penny masses ~2.5 g and, because of its low mass-to-drag ratio and tendency to tumble/flutter, reaches a terminal velocity of only roughly 10–14 m/s (about 25 mph) after a few dozen meters of fall — additional height adds no further speed, so a 1,000-ft drop is no more dangerous than a 50-ft drop.
• At that speed the penny's kinetic energy is roughly 0.2–0.35 joules. For comparison, a fastball or even a hard-thrown pebble carries tens to hundreds of joules; energies on the order of a fraction of a joule spread over a blunt coin face cannot penetrate skin or fracture a skull.
• Mythbusters tested the claim experimentally (penny-drop segment), including replicating Empire State Building fall speeds, and found pennies fired/dropped at terminal velocity merely stung and could not penetrate a human-analog skull or ballistic gel; the myth was busted.
• Louis Bloomfield's experiments dropping large numbers of pennies from a helium balloon found they flutter chaotically and 'don't even hurt' significantly on impact; he described being hit as feeling like a flick.
• Aerodynamics of real skyscrapers works against the claim: updrafts and turbulent wind around tall buildings typically cause lightweight coins to be carried sideways or upward, so a penny dropped from an observation deck usually never reaches the sidewalk below at all.
• No verified case of any person being killed by a coin dropped from a building has ever been documented, despite the myth circulating for roughly a century.

93/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Snopesfactcheck · 88 · Scientific Americannews · 88 · Louis A. Bloomfield, Dept. of Physics, University of Virginia ('How Everything Works')edu · 90 · MythBusters (Discovery) — penny-drop experimentother · 72 · BBC Science Focusnews · 82

• A U.S. penny is a real projectile with mass (2.5 g under current U.S. Mint specifications), and from skyscraper height it will reach terminal velocity and can sting or cause minor injury on impact; striking an eye or very vulnerable person would be more concerning than a typical skin impact.
• The claim is more plausible if the penny is not merely 'dropped'—for example, if it is thrown downward, launched, or replaced by a heavier/denser object—because falling objects from buildings can be dangerous. But that changes the claim as written.

• Scientific American reports that a penny dropped from the Empire State Building would be slowed strongly by air resistance because it is small and flat; physicist Louis Bloomfield estimated a terminal speed around 25 mph, enough to hurt but not to kill.
• Snopes rates the common claim that a penny dropped from the Empire State Building could kill a pedestrian as false, explaining that air resistance limits the penny’s speed and impact energy far below lethal levels.
• Live Science similarly explains that a falling penny reaches terminal velocity rather than accelerating indefinitely; it may sting but is not expected to penetrate a skull or kill someone.
• The deadly-version myth usually assumes vacuum-like acceleration over the full height. In real air, the penny tumbles and experiences drag, so the impact energy is much lower than a simple no-air-resistance calculation would imply.

92/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Scientific Americannews · 90 · Snopesfactcheck · 88 · Live Sciencenews · 78 · United States Mintgov · 95

• If dropped in a true vacuum without air resistance, a penny falling from a skyscraper would reach a velocity over 200 mph, which could theoretically cause severe injury or death.
• A heavier or more aerodynamic object (such as a roll of pennies, a heavy bolt, or a metal pen) dropped from a skyscraper would reach a much higher terminal velocity and possess enough kinetic energy to fracture a human skull and kill someone.

• A standard United States penny weighs only 2.5 grams and has a flat, non-aerodynamic shape, causing it to experience significant air drag as it falls.
• Due to air resistance, a penny dropped from a skyscraper quickly reaches a terminal velocity of only about 30 to 50 miles per hour, fluttering as it falls rather than accelerating endlessly.
• At terminal velocity, a falling penny possesses about 1 Joule (roughly 1 foot-pound) of kinetic energy, which is vastly insufficient to fracture a human skull or penetrate human skin.
• Physicist Louis Bloomfield of the University of Virginia experimentally verified this by dropping pennies from helium balloons; the impact of a penny at terminal velocity was described as feeling similar to being flicked with a finger.
• The television show MythBusters tested the urban legend by firing pennies at speeds higher than terminal velocity (65 mph) into a gel head and found that it did not even break the surface of the simulated skin.

100/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Scientific Americanjournal · 95 · Snopesfactcheck · 95

• In a vacuum or near-vacuum, a penny would not be slowed by air resistance and could, in principle, reach very high speeds from skyscraper heights; at sufficiently high speed, even a small object can deliver potentially lethal energy if it strikes a vulnerable area such as the eye or temple.[2][12][15]
• Idealized physics ignoring air resistance shows that a penny dropped from the top of the Empire State Building could mathematically accelerate to hundreds of km/h; if an object of a few grams somehow impacted a person at such speeds, in a worst-case scenario it could cause severe injury, though this requires unreal conditions not present in the real atmosphere.[4][12]
• Some sources note that if a coin were dropped inside a long evacuated container (a tall vacuum tube), it could continue accelerating and, under those artificial conditions, might become lethal.[2]

• Multiple physics-based analyses conclude that **air resistance limits a penny’s speed to a low terminal velocity** (around 25–40 mph or 40–65 km/h), far below what is needed to be lethal.[3][5][11][12][15]
• Scientific American, citing physicist Louis Bloomfield, explains that a penny is **too small, too light and too aerodynamically poor** to become a lethal projectile in air; it quickly reaches terminal velocity and then "flutters to the ground" and would feel like a light flick if it hit someone.[11][12]
• West Texas A&M University’s physics Q&A explicitly states that **"dropped pennies cannot kill people, no matter how high you drop them from"**, because air resistance caps the speed.[15]
• MythBusters experimentally tested the legend: a penny fired at terminal velocity (~65 mph) into concrete, asphalt, and a ballistics gel head with a human skull failed to penetrate; even when fired from a rifle, the penny could not penetrate the skull, leading them to classify the myth as busted.[1][14]
• Additional write‑ups summarizing the MythBusters tests and similar experiments report that even being directly struck by a penny at its maximum real-world speed produced only a sting and not serious injury.[4][6][7][8][9][10]
• Popular science explanations (HowStuffWorks, ScienceABC, Guardian) independently analyze the mass, shape, and drag forces on a penny and agree it can **cause minor pain or a small cut at most**, not death, when dropped from even very tall buildings in normal atmospheric conditions.[2][3][5]

94/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

MythBusters Fandom (summarizing Discovery Channel program)other · 80 · The Guardiannews · 90 · HowStuffWorksother · 80 · Unilad (reporting on MythBusters)news · 70 · ScienceABCother · 75 · Penn State student blog (citing external physics sources)edu · 65 · Business Insidernews · 80 · Penn State student blog (summarizing MythBusters and physics explanations)edu · 65 · Penn State student blogedu · 60 · SchoolyardMyths (myth‑debunking site)other · 65 · Scientific Americanjournal · 90 · FactFizz (popular science/educational site)other · 70

• Naive vacuum calculations (v=sqrt(2gh)) from typical skyscraper heights yield ~80-90 m/s and ~10 J, which some people treat as potentially dangerous.
• A penny theoretically could strike an open eye or contribute to a freak secondary accident (startle, fall).

• Air drag gives a tumbling penny a terminal velocity of only ~25-50 mph and kinetic energy well under 1 J—comparable to a light finger-flick and far below lethal blunt-trauma thresholds.
• MythBusters drops and air-cannon tests at and above terminal speed produced only minor stings or ricochets; no skin or skull penetration.
• Zero verified fatalities or serious injuries from coins dropped off buildings exist.
• Multiple physicists independently calculate the same low terminal velocity and conclude the impact cannot kill.

86/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Snopesfactcheck · 85 · Live Sciencenews · 80 · Wikipediaother · 70