Halliday, Resnick & Walker — Force and Motion–II: Problem 10_FCP

In 1987, as a Halloween stunt, two sky divers passed a pumpkin back and forth between them while they were in free fall just west of Chicago. The stunt was great fun until the last sky diver with the pumpkin opened his parachute. The pumpkin broke free from his grip, plummeted about 0.5 km, ripped through the roof of a house, slammed into the kitchen floor, and splattered all over the newly remodeled kitchen. From the sky diver’s viewpoint and from the pumpkin’s viewpoint, why did the sky diver lose control of the pumpkin?